The Painted Table Book Review

The Painted Table is story of three generations of women whose life revolves around a beautiful Norwegian table.

The book’s true heroin is Sapphire’s, or Saffee how she is normally called. And we find ourselves emerged into the story of how the table affected her life, her mother’s life and her mother’s mother’s life.

For her mother, Joann, the table is full of painful memories of her mother, a wife of a small farmer in the prairie, with too many mouths to feed. A woman who did her best to take care of her children and help her husband in his new country.

For Joann the table is the memory of the mother she lost and longed. Of the childhood she never really got to experience and of the powerful destruction of a prairie fire she experienced as a child.

While she grows up, marries and has children of her own, the table becomes her possession. Table that she desperately paints over and over again, to get rid of the memories that haunt her and make her life impossible.

Little by little she loses her sanity while her two daughters watch the process, unable to reach to the mother that they need. Obliged to keep their mother’s sanity and guard her, like their own daughter.

Saffee, the older daughter, grows up and goes to the college where she finally finds her life and a way to live it. While the younger daughter, April, is left behind to watch her mother to wither away further to insanity. And finally their father has to institutionalize her for her and the family’s safety.

April, the restless spirit, flees to Europe and Saffee finds herself making her new life. A relationship with a man she has learned to love and respect, a marriage and the question of her life: will she repeat the mistakes her mother made in her life?

When she finds out that her grandmother also had mental health issues her fears double, is she predestined by fate and biology to repeat the same behavior? Going through families old papers she finds the answer to the question and the new direction for her life.

The book tells a powerful story of redemption and love that is born from guilt, fear and broken and desperate lives. It is a book for wives, mothers and daughters to read, and for men who want to understand the women in their lives. In my opinion, a perfect gift for the upcoming Mother’s Day.

I sincerely recommend the book for anyone who wants to read a good book with a good story. Or for anyone who wants to achieve a better understanding of America’s past and how migration has affected it and the people’s lives in the country.

The Painted Table’s author Suzanne Field, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, has taught English as a Second Language in China, Ukraine, and Hawaii. She has also been a magazine editor and home-school teacher. Suzanne writes to encourage others to rise above memories and embrace the goodness found in each day. She and her husband have five children and divide their time between Dallas and Hawaii where she is a tutor and mentor.

The Painted Table in Amazon

Disclosure: I was provided with a e-copy of this book for review purposes.  All opinions expressed in this post are my own.