Review of Emily and Einstein by Linda Francis Lee

Emily and Einstein

Linda Francis Lee

St. Martin’s Press

369 pages

Emily Barlow lived in the shadow of her feminist mother and against her mother’s beliefs gave love a try. She met and fell in love with handsome Sandy Portman who came complete with wealth and pedigree, then a tragic accident makes her life spiral toward devastation and pretty soon she’s questioning the choices she’s made.
Sandy Portman had it all, a wife who adored him a posh Central Park apartment, a job with his family’s firm, a family with prestige and the prosperity that came with it. He comes to find out through divine intervention that he is not all that he thinks, and he finds himself given another chance to make things right but little does he know that this chance will come with complications, complications that he may not be able to overcome.

Linda Francis Lee has this little story to tell, she tells it with humor, with pain and with intense feelings that her readers will experience all of plus a few more as they read this incredibly touching, amazingly thought provoking tale. She tells it with a narrative that mixes whimsy and prose and her plot gives her audience a very It’s A Wonderful Lifesque feel to it complete with angels and consequences. But it’s her characters that steal the show and they run the gamut from wickedness to pure of heart. Her protagonist Emily is a woman that any female can identify with from any walk of life because we’ve all at one time or another experienced a form of her pain. Her other star is Einstein, and what a star he is, you have this complex, complicated and huge personality stuffed inside this small wiry dog. And the magic starts the very first time the author relays the dog’s thoughts and words and how she got into that perspective is just one part of the mystique of this wonderful story. Her co-stars are a booklover’s dream team and they are portrayed in such a way as to really intimate them to you as a reader. It’s a love story on so many different levels, it’s a romance, it’s a coming of age again tale, it’s about new beginnings and restitution and about moving on and leaving the past behind. But most of all it’s about faith and it’s about hope.

I have to admit that this is my first read by Ms. Lee, but let me assure you it’s far from my last. If you love to be entertained but informed at the same time, if you love novels that give life lessons, or if you simply love a story that’s filled with remarkable characters and a plot that literally sings, then sink your teeth into this one. It’s a must read for all ages the only requirement is that you “believe”.