A PROMISE KEPT

1920s

Teenage Emma is jealous of her beautiful younger sister, Elizabeth (aka Liza). Elizabeth attracts all the boys their age, including the notorious heartbreaker Alexander. Alexander repeatedly asks Emma to put in a good word for him to Emma (even though this breaks Emma’s heart since she herself has a crush on him). Even after Emma gets married to a rich gentleman named John, Alexander asks Emma if she thinks Liza’s marriage will last. When Emma confirms that Liza and John are happily married, Alexander half-heartedly proposes to Emma. He isn’t particularly attracted to Emma, but he’s anxious to have a wife and he gets along fine with her. Emma accepts his proposal, and the two get married.

Liza and John conceive a baby boy, but he dies at the age of 6 months. Rather than tear them apart, Liza and John allow this tragedy to bind them closer together. In contrast, Emma longs to have a child (since she thinks Alexander will finally love her then), and she gets excited when she finally conceives. But when Emma miscarries, Alexander seems to grow even more distant from her.

Over the years, Alexander grows more and more hostile with Emma:

He demands dinner to be ready as soon as he comes home from work.

He demands Emma to hand over her journals to him (which she wanted to keep private, even though she had nothing to hide, as she wrote nothing but glowing words about him).

He runs a bootlegging business despite Emma’s concerns about his safety and the possibility of him getting arrested. When he gets into an accident, he demands Emma to continue his deliveries.

Emma’s breaking point is when she comes home early one day (so that she can get ready for Liza’s new son’s birthday party), gets excited when she sees Alexander’s car in the driveway (thinking that he remembered to come home early for the party too), and catches him in bed with another woman. Emma slaps Alexander as she confronts him, and he beats her in return. Liza (being the good sister that she is), knew that something must have been wrong for Emma to miss Mark’s birthday party, so she checks on Emma the next day. She urges Emma to grab her things and leave Alexander (which Emma was too scared to think about doing on her own, since divorce was heavily looked down upon those days).

“Sis… Marriage does not give a man the right to beat his wife. A husband is supposed to love her so much he would die for her, like Christ for the church” (212).

Liza equips Emma with everything she needs to start over:

She gifts Emma with a log cabin (that was supposed to be a vacation house, but her and John never used it). It didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing, but it was appealing to have no one in that town know of Emma’s failed marriage.

She gifts Emma with a horse and buggy so that she could travel to the grocery store and other places.

She gifts Emma with a camera so that she can take pictures of nature as a hobby and even sell those photographs for money.

Emma slowly wakes up to the fact that she had been so busy trying to please Alexander that she lost her own identity (including her adventurous spirit).

“Easier is not necessarily better… // Somehow, Emma had to find her way back to her true self. She hadn’t lost herself in a day. She wouldn’t find her way back in a day. But she could take the first step. She could start looking” (177).

As Emma starts afresh, she continuously prays for Alexander to get to know the Lord. After he dies, a friend of his gives Liza a letter to deliver to Emma. Alexander wrote this letter as he was dying so that he could apologize for his hostile behavior and thank Emma for her patience when they were together, now that he had time to think of what had happened in retrospect.

Thanks to there being no internet, it was feasible for Emma to hide her secret throughout the years, not even telling Liza’s kids or grandkids as they grew up. Emma hid her wedding dress, journals, and photographs of Alexander in the log cabin’s attic.

Back

PRESENT DAY

After Emma died, her great-niece Allison inherited her log cabin. Allison had just gotten divorced from Tony (on account of him walking out after her ultimatum regarding him being an alcoholic who repeatedly failed to take action to be in control of his addiction). Knowing that Tony could use all the help he could get (due to his history of being laid off from different jobs), Allison let Tony keep their house and she moved into her Aunt Emma’s log cabin.

Allison adopts a dog named Gizmo to have companionship during this difficult time.

“I think it’s good to be alone right now. I’m in a good place. Really and truly I am. Maybe I needed to learn to be alone with myself so I can learn to be better with another if the time comes” (179).

Allison realizes that co-parenting is difficult even when a child (Meredith) is in her twenties since it’s hard to split up time for holidays and birthdays. Meredith convinces Allison and Tony to spend time together while she visits them so that she doesn’t have to split up her time.

“What was the phrase people used? Welcome to the new normal. That was it. A new normal. Life changed all the time. No matter how hard one tried to keep things the same, one never succeeded. Children grew up. Jobs got outsourced. Husbands walked out on their wives. Summer became autumn. Autumn became winter. Parents passed away. The Bible said there was an appointed time for everything and a time for every purpose under heaven. There were many new normals to be experienced in life. This was one of Allison’s” (127-128).

Allison gets pushed by others to start dating Chet Leonard, a strong Christian cowboy who recently lost one of his boys in a car accident and had his wife walk out on him shortly afterwards. Alliison and Chet go on a few dates, but they don’t do anything more intimate than him putting his hand on her back as he guides her into restaurants and movie theaters after opening the door for her. After a few months, Chet decides that he’s determined to work things out with his ex-wife (since he still cares about her and he wants his sons to have their mother). He apologies for leading Allison on, but she realizes that the feeling is mutual. She has been seeing Tony make genuine strides in going through the AA recovery program, growing in his faith, and letting Allison know that he is sorry for what he’s done and wants what’s best for her moving forward. A few months later, Allison and Tony get re-married (since Allison felt like God told her that He would be happy if they were together).

“I will never forget the day when I was so sure God promised to save my marriage. I thought the promise meant things would get better from that moment on. But Tony walked out and his drinking got worse and worse. So bad I thought he would die. God told me to let go of him. I thought that was the end, that it was proof God hadn’t promised to save my marriage, that I must have misunderstood Him. But maybe I didn’t misunderstand. Maybe He is saving my marriage. Maybe He saved it by ending it first” (282).

Throughout the book, Allison was surprised that her rambunctious, adventurous, financially-independent great-aunt had once been a submissive wife. She considers publishing a book of Emma’s journal entries and wildlife photographs to honor her (especially considering how Emma’s story gave Allison hope that past mistakes don’t define a person).