Backing Away Forward "Love, Hate and Forgiveness"

Sara’s exposure to broken dreams starts young, when her beloved white dog mysteriously disappears, and her mother abruptly douses the one bright spot in her life: her music lessons. The product of an unhappy, broken marriage, Sara yearns for her parents’ love but can’t ever seem to earn it. She is abandoned by her father and abused by her mother, with whom she lives in poverty. If not for the happy influence of her grandmother, she might never have known love as a child.
The loss of her grandmother leaves Sara hopeless and alone at age sixteen, with little chance of ever escaping her mother and her dismal situation. Then, upon her graduation from high school, she receives a letter and a gift from beyond the grave that brings a new hope into her life. Suddenly things that never seemed possible may become a reality for her.
Over the following years, Sara discovers what it’s like to find love, both real and imagined, and to reach for success in college and her budding career as an accountant. True friends and passionate lovers come and go. A move to Hawaii seems like the start of a new life—but complications arise from her choice of men, and a shocking marriage proposal tempts her.
Throughout her life, Sara remembers the grandmother who taught her that life can be grand and love is a happy possibility—even for someone who starts life as a poverty-stricken, abused, and rejected young woman like Sara.