#23: Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman

I was in Barnes and Noble this weekend and stumbled across Beth Hoffman's new book Looking for Me.  I love it.  I absolutely love it.  It warmed my heart and spoke to me.  It will most definitely make this year's list of my top ten favorite books.

Looking For Me centers around Teddi Overman and her family.  The chapters alternate between present and past and while we all know that I love this way of writing, I actually paid little attention to the dates written at the top of each chapter.  Honestly, I was so busy devouring each word that the dates didn't matter much to me.  I was able to figure out what was going on and when, despite my lack of concern over dates.   The setting alternates between Kentucky, the home of the Overmans, and Charleston, where Teddi makes her home when she becomes an adult.  The Overmans are a farming family, but Teddi and her brother Josh are destined to be something just a little bit more.

Much like when I read Hoffman's first novel, Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt, I quickly became enamored with all of the characters from Looking for Me. They are real characters, characters that are believable, characters that are lovable, characters that you wished you knew or lived near.  Some were funny, some just made me sad, and some made me smile.  From the very first chapter when Teddi described how some people are just sad while some just go running towards life, I knew that this book and its characters were going to hit home with me.  I was right.

You see, my very own mother, who I love dearly, is a lot like Teddi's mother.  Sadness is the only coat my mother knows how to wear.  If she won the lottery, she'd be sad about all of the taxes she had to pay.  My mother, had she been able to afford such things, would've bought me a typewriter for my high school graduation, much like her mother bought her a sewing machine.  She wanted my sister and me to be able to support ourselves.  Never depend on anyone, ever.  Especially never a man, she always said.  Needless to say, my mother, who will never read what I am writing because she can't figure out for the life of her why I'd spend so much time thinking about and writing about someone else's books (and because she hates computers and can't seem to ever remember how to access this blog), reminded me a lot of Teddi's mother who just never quite understood Teddi's life.

Personally, I loved Teddi's life and am so envious of someone who was able to truly live out her dreams and to create such beauty, to see such beauty, out of things that someone else no longer loved or needed.  I wish I was as gifted as Teddi.  I am thrilled for her that she was able to find her dream home and was able to make it distinctly Teddi.  I also am a bit envious of how truly independent Teddi is.  Is there anything Teddi can't do, I wonder?  Her mother should've been very proud of Teddi's life, the business she built, the home she made.  I only wished that she had been able to see it all.  I think she would've been OK with the typewriter being left behind.

I don't envy the stress and trauma that Teddi deals with over her brother Josh, however.  This is a part of the story that I will not reveal here.  It is crafted and told in a manner that a summary, especially one written by me, will never do justice.  You need to read about Josh yourself.  His story is inspiring.  He made me want to be a better person.  Well, truthfully, Teddi made me want to be a better person.  I have always told my husband that I want to do something during  my lifetime that would really make a difference (at which time he typically reminds me that I teach children for a living and I make a difference on a daily basis).  Teddi selflessly made a difference and left a legacy when she gave Gabe and Sally a very special gift in honor of her brother.

Without a doubt, my favorite part of this amazing book was meeting Miz Poteet (who made me laugh out loud at first and then just made me sad at the end) and her son Sam. I loved that these two interesting characters became such an integral part of the book.  As a reaction to an event with Sam, who is just the sweetest man with the biggest heart, Teddi recalls a memory with her mother where her mother warns her to "Never tie your happiness to the tail of someone else's kite."  Wow.  These words really spoke to me.  Haunted me, actually, as that is what I have done my entire life.  My happiness is tied to every kite tail but my own.  Should it worry me that I can't make myself happy, that it takes others to do that?  It scares me a bit sometimes that the people who make me happy will one day disappear.  Then, Teddi describes Sam on page 326, "He had become my friend, my touchstone, and now he was my lover.  I'd never dreamed I'd find those three attributes in one person."  It was at that moment when I realized that I had found the same attributes wrapped up on one person, too.  My husband Rob--one of the people who has my happiness tied to their kite tail. And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.  But it is so very scary to think of my life without him.

Teddi spent most of her life looking for Josh.  Yet the book is called Looking for Me.  Perhaps, in her search for her brother, she really found herself.  Perhaps that's what happens to us all. Maybe it's OK that my happiness is tied to the kite tails of my husband, my daughters, my friends, my family, and my kindergarten students.  Maybe that's what makes me ME.  I walked away from reading Looking For Me feeling better about myself  than I have in a long time.  Thank you, Ms.Hoffman, for reminding me that who I am in exactly what I am supposed to be. 

I loved this book.  I loved its message.  Oh, and the front cover is gorgeous!  Pick it up.  Read it. Treasure it.  Because it is a treasure. 

Happy reading everyone!
:) Dodie