The Words Between Us

by Erin Bartels
Dakota County library paperback 355 pages
genre: Christian realistic fiction

Super excited to go to book club tomorrow night! Erin Bartels is a wonderful storyteller. I really enjoyed this story about Robin Windsor / Dickinson and her journey from a wealthy life to striving to hide her family connections to running a bookstore by herself. The author uses "then" and "now" at the start of each chapter as we alternate between present time and Robin's teenage to young adult days. Beautifully written!

Pg. 46 - "I want to be alone. I'm best alone. But sometimes you do things you don't want to do in order to please your friends. People think that once you're an adult, stuff like that stops. It doesn't. It just changes."

As Robin concedes to Sarah's and Dawt Pi's insistence that she needs to get out of the bookstore, she recognizes that maturity doesn't always bring what one expects of life.

Page 83 - "Beneath it all ran the ragged sound of something else - that thing that all dead things are missing - leaving that dog's body. At the moment of impact, Farley looked me in the eye where I sat on the front lawn, and I could swear it wasn't a dog at all looking at me. It was whatever left that dog. It was there, Then it wasn't."

Throughout the book, the author describes death and life and that intangible essence of life in many different scenes and situations. This one just seemed to capture that moment of transition between life and death particularly well.

Page 141 - "I don't want to tell you what to do, Robin, but most people don't know what kind of time they have left with someone. You might." The "then" Peter was trying to convince Robin to visit her parents in prison, especially her dad before he was executed.

Life is precious! Reconcile differences. Hug the people you care about the most. Spend time with loved ones.

Page 178 - "Most of these books are not alive. They have not stood the passage of time. They do not still burn in the hearts of those who have read them. . . . They are merely inert paper and ink, and I doubt very much they could live again."

Comparing the books that were used to build their giant dinosaur (Dreadnoughtus) with great literature, Robin alludes to the physical life and death she has already talked about.

Page 252 - "Too much time has passed. Too much unspoken grief. All the letters I never wrote. But I can't go home with nothing to show for the miles this time. I can't keep going on this way, swept along by the winds of rumor and regret. Time moves in only one direction. I can't get back the time I've squandered. I can only move forward."

This is probably the absolute best "message" in the book!

Page  297 - "I'm looking for Dawt Pi. Because of all the people I know, she's the only one who has ever made me wonder if perhaps GOd must be real despite everything."

This gave me chills! People recognize when we truly live our lives for the Lord. I want to be like Dawt Pi, faithfully being "real" to the people around me, ready to share my faith.



This is a book I would consider purchasing, re-reading, highlighting, sharing, . . . it is a great book for book lovers.