Love is blind, literally and figuratively, in Gina Holmes's Wings of Glass. The story begins in a rural small town in 1999, when 18-year-old Penny Carson falls in love with Trent Taylor, a farmhand oozing bravado. The two have a whirlwind romance; when they decide to elope, Penny leaves a note for her disapproving parents telling them they shouldn't come looking for her. Surprisingly, they don't.
Fast-forward a decade: Penny, black-and-blue and beaten down, is living an isolated, poverty-stricken life with Trent, a flagrant alcoholic who vacillates between violent abuse and repentance. Penny chronically makes excuses for him; she's determined to get pregnant, believing a baby might salvage their marriage.
But when a fuel line explodes and blinds Trent on his welding job, Penny is forced to go in search of work to support them. Callie Mae, an older church-going woman aware of Penny's marital situation, offers her a job cleaning houses. Callie Mae and Fatimah, a Sudanese coworker, become Penny's friends, and the three forge a bond united by their sordid pasts.
Holmes (Crossing Oceans) writes this searing faith-based narrative from Penny's point of view, which lends authority to the psychological drama inherent in the pull-and-tug of abusive relationships. In the end, providence and friendship have the power to work together for good, but only if Penny will finally admit to her husband's bad behavior. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines