Call It a Gift: — Valerie Hobbs

In Valerie Hobb's novel, Jeronimo is seventy-seven and Emily eighty-two when they meet. It is not despite their age but because of it that theirs is a story of passion, and finally of grace. Jeronimo Smith is having a particularly bad day, and he needs the poems of William Butler Yeats to get him through it. But the book has just been checked out of the Santa Barbara Public Library. When he accosts the widow who has the book, he meets the woman who will become the love of his life. Their elopement is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure and the setting for a tender, bittersweet love story. The two must wrestle with balancing their family responsibilities with their own needs, with coming to terms with old prejudices and with the need to stay close to what is wild in the world and in themselves, despite pressures to age "sensibly." Together, they conclude that life, whatever its challenges, is meant to be lived fully to its very end. Call It a Gift dazzles with profoundly human characters and beautiful settings, unforgettable in the way it reminds us that romance and adventure are not merely for the young.