Recovering Charles

Recovering Charles

Jason F. Wright

Deseret Book & Shadow Mountain Publishing

2008

                       Jason F. Wright was born 1 February 1971in Florissant, Missouri. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and currently lives in Woodstock, Virginia. Other Books of his include:  Seventeen Second Miracle, The Cross Gardener, Christmas Jars Reunion, Penny's Christmas Jar Miracle, The Wednesday Letters, Christmas Jars, & The James Miracle. He is a New York Times best selling Author. He also co-wrote The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck.

                        Recovering Charles is about a young man named, Luke Millward, who travels to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to recover his father, Charles Millward. He goes through the challenge of rediscovering who the man is father became and how his father badly wanted what was best for him. It is told by Luke and what it was like for him as a child and how he and his father grew distant. It truly is a story of healing and how we all come to find the things that matter most in our lives. 

                       For me this is a story that truly hits home. I am originally from Louisiana and although I wasn't directly affected by Hurricane Katrina it did affect me in some way. Hurricane Katrian made land fall when I was attending my first day of college at BYU-Idaho. I remember going to class and having people ask me where I was from and the second I said Louisiana I was bombarded with questions that I was unsure how to answer. Living in the dorms I didn't know what was going on, or how anyone was doing. My parents were in Colorado at my sister's. The only member of my family near by was my eldest brother and he was able to get the generator from the house and take care of things down in Louisiana. Truth is, we later found out that our house only had 6 trees down in the front yard, which isn't saying much cause we had a forest before. The worst thing that happened to us was that the van that my brother just older than me now drives had all the windows on the drivers side smashed in due to the hurricane force winds. The van was parked at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. We were very fortunate to not have much damage though. However, in December of 2005 I flew into New Orleans and had forgotten all the details about the tarps on all the roofs and had the thought when landing, "what's with the blue roofs?" I later realized when on the ground that they were tarps. My father took us around to see some of the damage. We got to plaquemines parish where there was a carton from a barge that came from the other side of the levee near a place with elks. Shortly after this my father told us that we'd have to turn around because only government vehicles and residents were allowed in after that. Very scary to think about what all happened. I have since seen a documentary about it and read this book. The Documentary which I would also recommend is called Hurricane On the Bayou. It is about a young girl doing a school project about the importance of saving the wetlands. It soon turns into a documentary on an enormous hurricane. 

               The end of Recovering Charles it mentions a song. It is a very remarkable song called "Love Me If You Can". Please go to http://www.recoveringcharles.com/ to listen to the song and read more about this remarkable book.