Review A Promise of Safekeeping by Lisa Dale
Nine years ago, Lauren Matthews prosecuted the case of a lifetime. But her error in judgment sent an innocent man to prison for a long time. Now Arlen Fieldstone has finally been released, and Lauren has only one thing on her mind: asking forgiveness. How can she make up for nine years of his life?
To get to Arlen, Lauren must first get through Arlen’s best friend, Will Farris. Will hasn’t forgotten Lauren from those days, and he hasn’t forgiven her for destroying his best friend’s life. He is Arlen’s keeper, protecting him from suspicious neighbors as well as from Lauren.
In the steaming summer streets of Richmond, Virginia, three people’s lives collide. Lauren needs forgiveness. Arlen needs hope. And Will? He needs something too, something that no one can know-especially not Lauren…
What happens when felons who were not previously violent, go behind bars, then are released? No one ever really discusses what happens not only to the felons but to their families, friends, and the people that were involved in their trials, how do they change especially when it is found out that he was wrongly convicted. How does it change a hotshot lawyer’s career, when the case she built her professonal reputation on turns out to be a dud. How does it change the woman who was married to a guy who they thought could be guilty of such a heinous crime, how does her perspective on life change? Does she become withdrawn, does she question everything she has ever done?
What happens to the guy who worked so hard to get his friends case reopened. When his friend gets back from prison a completely different man, how is he able to help him, how is he able to rationalize getting him out when he is obviously a changed man. If he wasn’t able to do that kind of violence when he went in, but he is able and capable when he came out, how does that make him feel.
And finally the man who was falsely accused but spend his formative adult years in prison. 9 years in prison, has completely changed him.
I didn’t expect A Promise of Safekeeping to be so sweeping. It was this onion, this layer cake of characters, whose motivations are so complex, they’re so human. And we meet them that way. We meet the surface, then over time, through the book we peel back those layers until their true nature, their underpinnings, the things that really matter to them, their driving forces are revealed. Its a stunning way to learn characters and its a stunningly heartbreakingly surprising and beautiful novel about guilt.
The whole book is a study in guilt, how it plays us, causes us to do things that are irrational, unexpected, stupid, merely to placate it. Its one of those books that just takes you completely by surprise and moves you to a place that is just so out of your comfort zone that it forces you to recognize parts of yourself you didn’t like.
Its just amazing.
Overall Rating: B+
