Welcome Home by Glenda Poulter

Publisher:               P.D. Publishing

Welcome Home is about going home and confronting the past.  It's about learning that things are not always the way we perceived or remember them and the power of forgiveness.

Shelby Livingston has led a very successful life as a photojournalist, but traveling isn't as interesting now and she feels like it's time to settle down.  It happens that she has an interview for a position with a magazine near her hometown at the same time that her high school class is having its thirtieth reunion, so she decides to attend.  A chance encounter opens up memories of the past when she was one of the Six, including her friends Howie, Carolyn, Melissa, Kara, and Naomi.  Shelby is forced to confront some of the things that happened to them, especially the betrayal by of one of the group that destroyed their senior year.  When that same person asks Shelby to help her atone for what she did, Shelby learns that some of the things she has believed for years are not correct and that forgiving the past can open up the future.  She also learns that the love she's been looking for all of her life has been waiting for her at home the whole time.

Welcome Home is a quick to read book that explores friendship and what it can mean in a person's life, especially when you discover that you don't know your friends as well as you think you do.  It deals with how friends can be supportive and devastating and how sometimes you fail each other.  The one drawback to the book is that it could have been longer to give a fuller understanding of what happened between these people.  The reader is asked to accept a lot on face value instead of being able to develop an understanding of the characters.  There are holes that needed to be filled, especially involving one of the characters who commits suicide.  On the whole though, it's an interesting story, especially the interaction between Shelby and Naomi and the self-examination that Shelby has to go through about a number of issues.  The book delivers a message without hammering it in.  The reader absorbs the story and then wonders what she would have done under similar circumstances. 

This is Glenda Poulter's first book and shows promise for any future work she may produce.