About fifteen years after my grandma died, her book collection was one of the things we got sorted through. It was filled with paperback mysteries, thrillers, and romances from the 1970s and 80s with fifty-cent price tags and cover designs when graphic designers were still meticulously hand-painting the illustrations. I never really read the synopsis of the ones I kept; instead, I just chose the ones where she left notes in the margins, hoping to get a glimpse of a woman I never really knew.

(My personal favorite is "Strikly Speaking" by Edward Newman whose author now sports a pen-scribbled handlebar mustache and soul patch with a single-word review in her block-lettered handwriting on the back cover that says "THIS STRICKLY SPEAKING STINKS!")

I picked this book out of the pile because I liked the charming little pen and ink illustrations by Burt Silverman. But I had no idea what I was getting into when I picked it up this morning and decided to read it on a whim. This book is of its time, and I'm not its intended audience. It's the 1980s equivalent of a low-stake fantasy genre--just sub out the word fantasy for Christianity and trade the magic system for prayer/faith/divine intervention. However, I think no stakes/no conflict is probably more accurate than low stakes.

My rating is more about the nostalgia of physically reading the tiny yellowed book itself and less about the story on the pages--it smelled faintly like old cleaning solutions and my grandma--which summoned a half-remembered memory of her in her living room reading on the couch.