My Heart Remembers – Kim Vogel Sawyer







From Bethany House Publishers
Crossings Book Club Main Selection; Top Pick for 2008
CBD Bestseller; CBA Bestseller; ECPA Bestseller; CBD Best of 2008
Recipient Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence '09;
Recipient CO Romance Writers Award of Excellence '09;
Recipient Inspirational Readers Choice Award '09;
Winner ACFW Book of the Year '09

MY HEART REMEMBERS -- When their mother and father die in a tenement fire, three Irish-immigrant children are sent to Missouri aboard an orphan train to be adopted. Despite 8-year-old Maelle’s desperate attempts to keep her siblings together, each child is taken by a different family. But Maelle vows that she will never stop searching for them—determined that they will be together again one day, a family once more.

Eighteen years later, Maelle is still searching…but the years have washed away Maelle’s hope and her memories. What are Mattie and Molly doing now? Where has life taken them? Are they well and living happy lives? Do they wonder at all about the family they once knew and loved? United by blood, divided by time, will they ever be a family again? Only time…and God…can tell.


The above impressive list of awards indicates I’m not the only person who loved this book. Admittedly, one of the reasons I’m posting this review of a book that came out in 2008 is because I know the sequel is coming out later this year (September 2010).

MY HEART REMEMBERS is a story that taps a reader’s deepest memories of family, even the ones buried and blurred by time and pain. Kim takes three distinct story lines and weaves them so seamlessly, not only does the reader transition from one to another naturally, they are transported into the scene by the author’s gentle tugging at one’s heart. You will cheer for Maelle as she doggedly clings to her hope of finding her siblings. Mattie’s circumstances take him in multiple directions, making it unlikely his path will ever cross Maelle’s again. Since Molly was hardly more than a baby at the time of their separation, she has no memory of the big sister who loved her fiercely or the older brother who wanted to protect her. MY HEART REMEMBERS will make you cry, laugh, gasp, ache, and lose sleep as you sit up till the wee hours reading because you can’t put it down. MY HEART REMEMBERS will make your heart remember long-forgotten people and places, circumstances and events from your own past. This is one of those books that pulls you in.


Being a critique partner with Kim Sawyer affords me a unique opportunity to read her work before the general public does. If you haven’t read MY HEART REMEMBERS yet, I encourage you to do so before September when the sequel, IN EVERY HEARTBEAT, hits the bookstore shelves. You won’t want to miss that one either.