Already sloshed from one-too-many drinks at a faculty party, Leah Thornton cruises the supermarket aisles in search of something tasty to enhance her Starbucks-Kahlua, for example. Two confrontations later-one at the grocery store and the other with her friend Molly-Leah is sitting in the office of the local rehab center facing an admissions counselor who fails to understand the most basic things, like the fact that apple juice is not a suitable cocktail mixer. Rehab is no picnic, and being forced to experience and deal with the reality of her life isn't Leah's idea of fun. But through the battle she finds a reservoir of courage she never knew she had, and the loving arms of a God she never quite believed existed.

Leah Thornton’s life, like her Southern Living home, has great curb appeal. But a paralyzing encounter with a can of frozen apple juice in the supermarket shatters the façade, forcing her to admit that all is not as it appears. When her best friend gets in Leah’s face about her refusal to deal with her life, Leah is forced to make an agonizing decision. Can she sacrifice what she wants to get what she needs? Joy, sadness, and pain converge, testing Leah’s commitment to her marriage, her motherhood, and her faith.

A born and bred Louisiana girl, Christa Allan is an award- winning,multi-published author of stories of redemption for the broken. Her novel, The Edge of Grace, won the 2012 SELAH for Contemporary Fiction. Threads of Hope is her fourth novel. By day, she is a National Board Certified teacher who has been teaching high school English for more than twenty-four years. The mother of five adult children and the totally smitten Grammy of two granddaughters, Christa and her veterinarian husband, Ken live in New Orleans where they await retirement, play golf, and continue to dodge hurricanes.

When a narrator opens her tale by declaring, “I lost my sanity buying frozen apple juice,” the reader knows she’s in for a witty ride. The narrator is Leah Thornton, a 27-year-old Southerner, English teacher, and middle-stage alcoholic. She’s got her reasons: her only child died of SIDS and her sexual relationship with her husband, Carl, is so troubled their marriage is devolving into a standoff between hostility and frigidity. Leah is steered into rehab by her BFF Molly, which kicks off transformation through growing honesty, self-awareness, and large doses of wry humor. Allan draws many strong, quirky minor characters: Leah’s rehab roomie, Theresa, one of a rehab unit’s worth of addicts of all manner of substances; Leah’s wry obstetrician, Dr. Nolan. A few supporting characters—Carl’s wealthy parents—feel more caricatured than characterized, and the largely unsympathetic portrait of Carl makes the reader wonder why the marriage is worth saving at all. A few major developments toward the book’s end cry out for greater resolution. But Leah is fascinating, complicated, and above all funny. This nonformulaic look at the spiritual redemption of a life is a bright start; debut novelist Allan is one to watch. (Feb.) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.

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