Apparently, this book is the second in a series featuring “ex-debutante Madeline Dare.” References to the first book in the series abound in this the second, but they’re unexplained. I didn’t care enough to find out where and why Madeline killed a man in self-defense, but I did glean that she did —and that she’s happy to have escaped something in Syracuse.

However, it seems to be a case of “out of the frying pan,” because if Syracuse was bad, a “crazy school” in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts turns out to be much worse. Madeline has a job at this school and residential treatment center for mentally disturbed adolescents. Unfortunately, the administration is crazier than the the inmates. And why Madeline, who’s supposed to be in full possession of her faculties despite being clinically depressed, doesn’t resign within two days of her arrival at Santangelo Academy . . . Maybe it has something to do with the mess she left behind in Syracuse in the first book.

That’s not the only motivational issue in the story, but it’s a minor example. Madeline also returns to her job a few days after a double murder at the school, a murder that the police suspect Madeline of committing. And, like a lunkhead and against her lawyer’s orders, she goes over to have tea and conversation with the guy she suspects is the murderer.

I’m not buying any of that kind of idiocy, and if you are, I’ve got a manuscript tucked away in my bottom desk drawer about a girl who spends the night in a haunted house and . . .

Having loved two others of Ms. Turner’s books, I saw this one at Half-Price Books and immediately snapped it up. I wondered if it would live up to its predecessors in my reading life, A Garden To Keep and Winter Birds. It did.

However, the book does start out, and proceed, rather slowly, and the narrator’s voice takes some getting used to. Margaret Tuttle is a lunchroom supervisor at Emma Weldy Elementary School. She’s a high school dropout, but very well read and educated, nevertheless. On the first page of the novel, she says, “My passion is reading. I am haunted by phrases from things I have seen and done as well, though I prefer by far the haunting from things I have read.”

Margaret Tuttle is haunted by many things, as she indicates, not just books, and although she tells her story in a precise, erudite, almost pretentious tone, she reveals her secrets and those of the subject of her story, Birdie Freeman, at just the right pace. If the ending is rather abrupt, it mirrors life which is full of abrupt endings.

Margaret has decided to spend the three months of her summer vacation writing the story of her growing friendship with a woman named Birdie Freeman. Birdie is a bit too good to be true, and Margaret knows that her portrayal of Birdie is almost unbelievable.

You have seen Birdie Freeman as I saw her: gentle of spirit, high of principle, unfaltering in kindly demeanor. I have added nothing and have omitted only more of the same . . . As extremes are rarely believable, there are readers who will accuse me of selective and slanted reporting, but to them I shall answer that I have told all that I have seen.”

Birdie is the heroine of this novel, and although she is homely and uneducated, her essential character is flawlessly kind and loving. I suppose this Pollyanna-ish portrayal is a problem, but don’t you know at least one person who looks a little too good to be true? Perhaps we assume that behind closed doors there are unseen faults and character deficiencies, and perhaps there are. Still, it’s amazing to realize that there are good, not sinless, but good, people in the world.

I actually found the character of the narrator, Ms. Tuttle, to be somewhat more difficult to believe in. Margaret is a woman who lives in the world, with a husband, a job, relatives, but with no emotional connection to any of it. She and her husband, Thomas, have shared a fifteen year long marriage in which she prepares the meals and cleans the house, and he does the household repairs and pays the bills. They sleep in separate bedrooms and share no romantic or emotional relationship. This sort of platonic marriage arrangement seems rather unlikely, to say the least.

Some Wildflower in my Heart is the story of Margaret and Birdie and of how their friendship changes both of them, but especially Margaret. If you’re a fan of authors Jan Karon or Brett Lott, you might try one of Jamie Langston Turner’s books. Memorable characters living authentically Christian lives in a broken world make for good fiction.

Semicolon review of A Garden To Keep by Jamie Langston Turner.

Semicolon review of Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner.

I am pleased to think that I still have two or three more published books by Ms. Turner yet to experience, and as far as I know she’s still writing and may write more excellent novels. Bring them on.