Review: The
Love We All Wait For
"Lee Doyle has written an engaging, and sometimes dark, coming-of-age story set in the Salinas Valley in 1975. Sheila O'Connor is 17, still mourning the death of her father six years ago, and her mother is about to remarry, to Sheila's dismay. Her little sister, Annie, loves her mother's fiancé, her older brother, Josh, has joined the Marines, and her relationship with best friend, Ingrid, has hit a rocky patch. Classic situations, and in Doyle's confident prose, fresh and unsentimental . . .
Lee Doyle has a way with characters and an equally deft way of describing the Valley landscape, where it's hot and dry, and eyes are always squinting against the sun and the wind. 'The soles of my flip-flops seemed soft when they made contact with the pavement. The air was dense, resistant to movement.' Later the wind would blow through the valley to wash away the dust, the metallic odor of pesticides and the 'shivering smell' of the steer ranch in the foothills. When Josh leaves town, the quiet of the Sunday morning 'was like an ache I couldn't quite locate. It was in the haggard slump of buildings. In the stark, lonely quality of the light.'
Sheila thinks she can make her way through the world while taking care of her loved ones, but she finds she can't change people. Instead, she learns how to deal with abandonment, how to survive pain and how to grow from her experiences, finding joy in the midst of sorrow.
Lee Doyle has written a lovely, affecting coming-of-age novel of one girl's transformation in the face of sadness and loss."
Marilyn Dahl
"Shelf Awareness"
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"A woman threatens her daughter's boyfriend with the knife 'she uses to cut cow brains for tacos,' a character explains in Lee Doyle's novel about growing up in Salinas, The Love We All Wait For, new from Walnut Creek's KOMENAR Publishing."
Anneli Rufus
"East Bay Express"
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"Lee Doyle's prose is a warm, swift wind that sweeps away the haze of everyday life to offer a startlingly clear view of that greatest mystery, the human heart."
Lewis Buzbee
Author of "The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop"
"The Love We All Wait For is world-weary and unsentimental as only a seventeen-year-old can be. I loved this book from start to finish. Crisp, vivid, perfect."
Kathi Kamen Goldmark
Author of "And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You"
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