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Gone but not Forgotten by D. M. Wilmes Review by Roseanna White We live in an age of ambition and bottom lines. It isn’t exactly a new thing; people have been putting income above family for as long as they had both, trying to secure a place in the world. For many, their ambition starts out of an honest desire to provide for those they love. But it’s so easy to lose sight of family, to sacrifice time with them for that paycheck each week. And so hard to make a decision to change it. In Gone but not Forgotten, system’s engineer Clay Williams is a man facing a choice between what he sees as two evils: he can work all day every day in hopes of gaining a higher position in the company at which he’s invaluable, but never see his family–or he can look for another job that allows him more time at home, but sacrifice a portion of the income on which they’ve come to rely. His wife is fully in favor of making that sacrifice, but Clay’s not so sure. He’s worked hard for the security he has in his job, and to just give it all up is unthinkable. Then Clay goes on a hunting trip at his uncle’s farm, and it ends up changing his life. He stumbles upon a small family graveyard, the markers all bearing dates from nearly a hundred years ago. More startling still, he stumbles upon a little girl in the graveyard who answers to one of the names on the headstones. Convinced this is either a prank or growing insanity, Clay nevertheless listens to her story about her one brother who died at the age of nine, her mother who followed within five years, her father a year later. She, too, passed away at the tender age of fourteen, after her brother–and all of their stones have the same inscription: "Gone but not forgotten." Clay is unsettled when she talks of the father who always worked so hard to see to their needs, but was never around to give the love they needed most, about the older brother who survived them all, whose fate she doesn’t know. He is touched in a way he never imagined, realizing the similarity between himself and the long-dead Frank De Havrich, the apparition’s father. Is that how his children feel about him? As Clay heads back to home and work, the questions won’t go away. His relationship with his wife is deteriorating, his job is as demanding as ever without the promised rewards, he is stressed and tired as Christmas approaches, but it is the story of the De Havrichs that possess him. Research leads him to some information about the missing older brother, Aiden, and he pursues it even when it means leaving his family and angering his boss. Through he search he comes to know a different kind of man–one who knew success without sacrificing love, who gave from a full heart and was blessed in return. The kind of man he must become if he’s to save his home life. D. M. Wilmes weaves a story of hard truths and unexplainable mystery. By blurring the line between death and life, he uses a tried-and-true method to reach his character and his reader. Though most of us are doubtful at best about the existence of ghosts, we will all probably admit that sometimes things happen we can’t quite explain–and moreover, we’ve all read (or watched) and loved the Dickens’ story that made such good use of them. Though the faith-aspect of this story is understated, it’s also morally clear. This is a small book about big problems with priorities, lessons even the best of us need reminded of. It’s a quick read at just under 100 pages, too, which makes it manageable even at that busy time of year around which it’s set. Overall, I found nothing particularly ground-breaking in this book, but it was still a good read with a story timeless if familiar. I appreciated the triumph of truth and the epiphany Clay reached, even if I had to at other times shake my head at his stubbornness. |
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