From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and Christian motivational speaker comes her fiction debut.
Jenny Blake has a theory about life: big decisions often don't amount to much, but little decisions sometimes transform everything. Her theory proves true the summer she's 14, when she makes the decision to pick up a penny embedded in asphalt and consequently ends up stopping a robbery, getting a job, and meeting someone who changes her life forever—Miss Shaw. Together they form a friendship that dares both of them to confront secrets in their pasts—secrets that threaten to destroy them. Jenny helps Miss Shaw open up to the community around her, while Miss Shaw teaches Jenny to meet even life's most painful challenges with confidence and faith. This unexpected relationship transforms them both in ways neither could have anticipated, and the ripple effect that begins that summer goes on to bring new life to the people around them, revealing how God works in the smallest details—even in something as small as THE PENNY.
When Jenny Blake picks up "the penny" from the hot St. Louis pavement one summer in the 1950s, she unknowingly sparks a chain of significant events. This coming-of-age novel, often painful to hear as it recounts physical, sexual, and verbal abuse, redeems its characters as faith, and acts of faith, intervene. Secrets are elegantly woven into the story, and its inspirational theme begins to make itself felt with the introduction of the mysterious Miss Shaw, a teacher of love and hope. Emily Janice Card's eloquent pacing, combined with her youthful pitch, depicts Jenny's plight and the penny's ripple effect. One clearly hears Jenny's smiles and humor in Card's bright delivery. A.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
