53. Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah

I picked up Magic Hour while browsing. While I am sure I'd heard about Ms. Hannah before, I never read anything by her. I'm glad I gave it a go, it was a warm and touching book, one I needed to read while planning and getting through my beloved grandmother's funeral. I give it an A-.

From Amazon:
Deep in the Pacific Northwest lies the Olympic National Forest– nearly one million acres of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. Even in this modern age, much of it remains undiscovered and uncharted. From the heart of this old forest, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she can give no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past. . . .Until recently, Dr. Julia Cates was one of the preeminent child psychiatrists in the country, but a scandal shattered her confidence, ruined her career, and made her a media target. When she gets a desperate call from her estranged sister, Ellie, a police chief in their small western Washington hometown, she jumps at the chance to escape. In Rain Valley, nothing much ever happens–until a girl emerges from the deep woods and walks into town. She is a victim unlike any Julia has ever seen: a child locked in a world of unimaginable fear and isolation. When word spreads of the “wild child” and the infamous doctor who is treating her, the media descend on Julia and once again her competence is challenged. State and federal authorities want to lock the girl away in an institution until an identification can be made.But to Julia, who has come to doubt her own ability, nothing is more important than saving the girl she now calls Alice. To heal this child, Julia will have to understand that she cannot work alone and must look to others–the people in the town she left long ago, the sister she barely knows, and Dr. Max Cerrasin, a handsome, private man with secrets of his own.Then a shocking revelation forces Julia to risk everything to discover the truth about Alice. The ordeal that follows will test the limits of Julia’s faith, forgiveness, and love, as she struggles to ascertain where Alice ultimately belongs.In her most ambitious novel to date, Kristin Hannah delivers an incandescent story about the resilience of the human spirit, the triumph of hope, and the mysterious places in the heart where love lies waiting.

While in some spots a bit predictible, I fell in love with Ellie, Julia, the small twon where the story takes place, and of course Alice. This book was so warm and caring and it was so well written that I felt like I belonged there with the town. While I thought the ending could have been a bit better, I was left feeling happy and sad at the same time and content with reading it. As I mentioned above, while reading it we were planning and then attending my grandmother's funeral and in some ways, the book allowed me to escape but also remember the wonderful things my grandma did. I will definitely be checking out more of Ms. Hannah's backlist (as a matter of fact I already have checked out one of her other books!).