What She Left for Me - Tracie Peterson I am giving this book two stars--it was ok. I can't say that I liked it. The premise was a great one; wife returns from a mission trip to Africa to find that her preacher husband has ran off with his secretary draining their bank accounts and taking anything of value in the home. The story expands from there to how Jana deals with this abandonment and alternates between the present and the past with a look at the life of her mother Eleanor as she was raised in a 'Hippy' commune and also the life of Taffy her great aunt. I found Eleanor's story to be the most interesting, but the believability of the deception and actions were lacking for me. I also loved the portrait painted of Great Aunt Taffy. Her positivity brought a nice touch to the book especially given the sour attitude of Eleanor. However, Eleanor's sudden change of heart seemed unbelievable to me also. I felt the book could have been wrapped up much sooner. The author tried to give answers to everything by using the Lord and church teachings to explain them. In these parts it seemed to read more like a Sunday School lesson. As I said, the book gave so many answers to human actions and human evil but still left me wondering....where are the brothers, where is the father, did Jana and the new preacher get together, did Taffy and Stanley marry...etc. As I read through the other reviews given of this book, I feel like I am in the minority. I do have to add that normally I enjoy Christian fiction, but it seems like the spiritual lessons were overdone and I feel that the impact of these lessons could have been greater with more subtleness. I do applaud the author for tackling tough issues and using Christian teachings to give us hope.