The Fence My Father Built

Title: THE FENCE MY FATHER BUILT
Author: Linda S. Clare
Publisher: Abingdon Press
October 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4267-0073-6
Genre: Inspirational/contemporary women’s fiction

Muri Pond is starting over. She’s lost her job as a school librarian, lost her husband to another woman, lost her home, and now she’s on the verge of losing her sixteen-year-old daughter, Nova. Then she learns that her father, Joseph Pond has died, willing his high-desert property to Muri.

When Muri arrives in town, she and her two children stop for lunch at a greasy spoon. There they meet their neighbor, Linc, a man who owns most of the town, and is suing her for the creek. Muri wants to work it out, but apparently according to water laws, since Linc left town and was gone for more than five years he gave up all rights to the creek.

While Muri struggles to put her life back together, and to deal with a difficult neighbor, she also must come to grips with who her father was. What made him build a fence out of old oven doors? And she must discover the faith her alcoholic Native-American father never abandoned.

THE FENCE MY FATHER BUILT has written some other books, but this is the first book of hers I’ve read. It is rather sad how divorce affects families as Muri has struggled with it all her life, and now her children are struggling with it. It did give a rather melancholy beginning to the story.

I wished Muri had had the opportunity to know her father, (the letter he wrote to her when she was five was heart-breaking) but sometimes people have to find out the hard way. There is a touch of a romance included. Discussion questions are included at the end of the book. $13.99. 292 pages.