No Exchanges, Substitutions, or Returns

A year ago, a friend casually handed me a book, The Truest Pleasure, by Robert Morgan.

I was told, "Read it, or just pass it on. I don't want it back."

I started the book that night. The story is about Ginny, a woman who loves attending Pentecostal worship. She inherits land from her aging father. Tom wants land to call his own, so he marries Ginny. He is obsessed with working the farm. He thinks that Ginny's obsession with the Pentecostal church is a disgrace.

The book drags on (and on) in a repetitive way, the same dance of back-breaking, dawn to dusk labor amidst the practical marriage between a woman who wants to go to church, and her husband who doesn't 'get' it.

As the book went on, I would frequently lie it upon my lap and vent to my husband about how irritating it was, and how I didn't even want to finish it.

I was angry, because something as important as a person's commitment to a particular faith should be well-understood before marriage is considered.

If Tom didn't want to be married to a devout Pentecostal woman, then he shouldn't have chosen one!

Tom should have married another woman, one who was a better match, but haha, Ginny was the one that had inherited the land that Tom wanted so badly.

"Tom should suck it up! And I want to wring Ginny's neck!" I would wail to my husband, as I trudged through page after page.

Finally, I made it to the end- (spoiler warning)- Tom gets sick, and Ginny has to take care of him. After taking care of him for the entire illness, Ginny has an epiphany that she actually does love her husband. She runs in to tell him this great news, to find him dead. The end.

The book remained on my nightstand for months.

If I had touched it, I would have thrown it out the window.

So when a friend invited us to her Book Exchange/ Open House, I knew exactly which book I needed to pass along.

The kids had picked out a few of their own books, as well, and we put them all in the pile.

The party was lovely and a great time was had by all.

As the party was drawing to a close, my husband remarked that he had not yet gone through the books and chosen one to take home.

"Well, get to it! There are tons in there!"

"You watch", I joked quietly to my friend, "He'll come back with the same book we brought. Haha."

After about 15 minutes, he re-emerged from the book pile with The Truest Pleasure in hand.

"Ack! No!! NO!!"

"What?" he flipped the book to the back cover, and scanned it again. "It looks good!"