Angels Walking

Angels Walking by Karen Kingsbury           Audio Book: 11 hours, 11 mins         Hardback Book:  384 pages                  Genre: Adult Fiction    Christian Romance   Angels

This book is the first in Karen Kingsbury’s Angel Series.   The story itself was o.k.   I liked the premise – an injured ball player loses his chance at the big leagues and ends up down on his luck, his finances, his girlfriend, becomes addicted briefly to the pain pills he is given to combat the intense pain he still suffers.   His parents have high expectations for him and push nothing but becoming a professional ball player to him throughout his life to this point.   Feeling he has let them down and disappointed with himself he leaves town to get away from anyone who might recognize him and ends up as a maintenance man at a home for the elderly.   There he, Tyler Ames meets an elderly resident, Virginia Hutcheson who has Alzheimers and is doing so poorly the residence wants to send her to another facility 165 miles away that treats the residents with severe dementia and is able to deal with their angry outbursts more so than the quiet home her daughter has put her in.    Her daughter goes into a tailspin when the Director of the Nursing Home her mother is currently in wants her to transfer out as the staff do not have the training to properly care for residents with such acute symptoms.    When Tyler enters Virginia’s room to mop the floor it is as though her mind has been freed and she is restored to her former self.   The miraculous turn around in her condition is due to Tyler’s presence – he looks just like her son, Ben, and Virginia is sure that Ben has come back and while Virginia sees Ben in a mental time frame from when he was young, Tyler feels sorry for her and goes along with it.   His intentions are pure, he sees no harm in “being” her son because it makes her so happy,   The Director of the facility is wary wondering if Tyler is trying to get something from Virginia nut learns that the two are fast friends and Tyler spends time visiting with Virginia and talking and listening to her talk.   When her daughter comes to visit expecting another horrible visit where her mother doesn’t recognize her and wants her to leave, but, she is gob-smacked to find her mother up and dressed, her hair combed and looking wonderful.   Her mother even recognized her, had several loving comments to make and told her all about her brother Ben coming to visit.   Her daughter thought she was experiencing Alzheimer symptoms again, but, no, she was totally lucid carrying on conversations, behaving lovingly none of what they had been going through the last few years.   What brought about the change?    The Director brings her into his office for a chat and gets the wanting to send her to another facility talk out of the way.   Virginia has recovered so tremendously there is no reason for her to leave.   The Director tells about the miracle that Tyler’s presence has brought about.      There are angels afoot, too, putting everyone in the right place so they connect.     More happens and the angels come in and out of the story and there is a cliffhanger at the end.    The story was pleasant enough but many times throughout the author seemed to go off spelling out so many details about uninteresting things.    The story would flow for a while then get bogged down in all this extra unnecessary in my opinion verbage that went on and on about minute things or uninteresting things or things that barely needed to be discussed in the story.    If the author was paid by the word she was making a lot of extra pay for narrative that did not feel like it needed to be included.   That took away from the story for me.   It was like discussing each separate hair on someone’s head when you could just say hair and be done with it.    I found that really annoying to wade through when you just want to get to the meat of the story.   Perhaps the author is just wordy and obviously felt it was needed whereas I could not wait to rush through what felt like 7 extra hours on the audio book that did not contribute a farthing but made me not want to read the next in the series because it was so aggravating to wade through the muck that bogged the story down.    My recommendation, Karen Kingsbury, don’t overthink yourself when writing.    Don’t go back and feel like you to flesh the story out or that maybe you need to concentrate more on the details of everything you are describing.    The slogan, less is more, is true.    The story was just o.k. for me, plus, I love Clarence in Frank Cappra’s, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but I was not a fan of the commando angels brought in from time to time throughout the book.    I wanted to like this story more and true enough, I liked the story just those couple of grating things like ants at a picnic or mosquitoes on your camping trip that put me off.    I want to say I would recommend this book, but, if you are like me and want to get to the gist of things not 40 miles around it then over the hill criss-crossing a field running a marathon and oh yes, this is what happened next.    I just didn’t have a lot of patience for this story.