Return to Love By Anita Stansfield Covenant Communications, 1997. Trade paperback: 351 pages. ISBN: 1-57734-126-0 Suggested retail price: $11.95 (US)
Reviewed by: Katie Parker

Since there has been some discussion on the List recently about what makes popular books tick, and since there aren't any other formal Stansfield reviews in the archives, and since I just read this book yesterday, I thought I'd offer my humble opinion on the matter.

First, a summary of this particular book. The hero, Colin Trevor, and the heroine, Janna Hayne, have been together for two years during high school. It's a match made in heaven; they are deeply in love and committed to one another. But then Janna graduates from high school and moves to another state, and (for reasons important to plot development, so I won't state them here) breaks off all contact with Colin. Colin spends the next eight or so years looking for her and praying that he will find her. (He also serves a mission and becomes a lawyer.) When he does find her, purely by chance / divine intervention, she is married to a man (Russell) who is active in the Church and looks wonderful to everyone, but he beats her in private. Through the course of the story, Janna leaves Russell, tries to salvage her life and her sanity while continuing to care for her child, and of course, builds a new relationship with Colin. Colin, taking on this new baggage, has things of his own to work through.

I will say right off that I thought the book was fun (maybe "fun"'s not the right word here, but I enjoyed it) and interesting to read, and the scenes where the abuse occurs and later when Janna and Colin attempt to cope with it, particularly as they talk to their counselor, are somewhat illuminating. I almost (not quite) shed tears as I read the scene where Janna finally gains enough courage, on her own and through prayer, to pack and to leave Russell. She'd suffered so much, and it was so hard for her to find enough shreds of self-worth to even want to rescue herself. There are some real issues being dealt with here, and that's one of the charms of the book.

Another effective plot devise Stansfield uses is the threat of Russell finding Janna, after she has left, and punishing her for putting him through all this. It adds another dimension to the story. I also thought it was significant that Russell was perceived by all as an honorable man, and he was in the elders quorum presidency and attended the temple regularly. Again, these are all-too-real issues being dealt with here, and they're timely ones, too.

And then there's the romance formula. A man desperately in love with a woman in a desperate situation rescues her and, after overcoming obstacle after obstacle, they live happily ever after. It's been done zillions of times before, and Stansfield takes full advantage of it every time. In fact, in many ways this book seems like First Love all over again, with the characters taking on different names and different situations. But the story was the same, the relationship was the same. Even the personalities of the characters, to me, were pretty much the same. But on the other hand, why not? It works. The romance business is thriving, and Anita Stansfield is a top-selling LDS author. And if you repeatedly use the same formula, you're going to get a lot of similarities no matter what. But that's what an awful lot of readers seem to want.(though I have to wonder: Will it get old? Will readers tire of this formula? Will Stansfield run out of ways to vary it? Will she ever try something new? Does she even have the option anymore, in terms of the audience she's built?)

Why do readers want what Stansfield writes? I wish I knew. Maybe it has something to do with the same reasons millions of people, mostly women, like soap operas. (I don't know what reasons for that, either.) But I think that for many LDS women (I'm hypothesizing here; I haven't run any polls or anything) Stansfield gives them the emotional and dramatic intensity they're looking for in their reading, with the security of knowing that things will never get raunchy. Everything is handled with LDS standards and sensitivity (or thereabouts). Plus the characters solve their problems through divine assistance, which at times can honestly be inspirational to the reader. That's why I enjoyed this book and others before it. I didn't so much appreciate the romance (honest!) as I did the emotional intensity of it all. I feel like I've been through the wringer after finishing one of her books. Why is that a good thing? I don't know. But it sure beats going through the wringer with your own problems. At any rate, this sort of tension and high emotions are (to my knowledge) rare in LDS books. But apparently it's what many LDS readers (women) want.

Now for the problems. First, maybe it's just me, but I'm getting kind of turned off by this perfect romance love-conquers-all thing.

Second, I'm troubled by how the characters never break the rules, but they sure do bend them. In this case, Janna is still legally married to Russell, but is building quite a relationship with Colin. That itself would not have bothered me so much, since she'd already left Russell and everything, except that Colin's father mentions at some point that the Church does not condone dating of any kind until a divorce is final. Then he says something to the effect of, "But this is a special case. Just be careful." Sure, every case is different and some may require special consideration. But where do they get off deciding that because they are special, the rules don't apply to them? Like I said, sometimes there are special cases. But to see it so specifically stated, and so quickly dismissed, really bothered me. I would have at least preferred to see more soul-searching on that one.

But the thing that bothered me the most was how Janna got into the situation with Russell in the first place. Over and over, people reassure Janna that no one has any right to treat her as Russell has, and she never did anything to deserve the abuse or to cause it. But it is also established that 1) she never should have left Colin in the first place, and 2) she never prayed about marrying Russell, and she did it only to get out of the house, and she never should have married him. So while Colin so sweetly forgives her for leaving him hanging for eight years, and assures her that she did nothing to deserve the abuse she endured, the part left unspoken is that, in a roundabout way, it was Janna's fault she was abused. If she hadn't been so stupid as to marry Russell, it never would have happened. This isn't a feeling of Colin's, but of the book in general. And while I think Stansfield is in a difficult position here (if it wasn't stupid of Janna to marry Russell, then she would be saying that God approved of her marriage knowing full well that she'd be beaten relentlessly, and that's a sticky proposition) I do wish that those implications that it was Janna's fault were not there.

This isn't the first time this has happened in a Stansfield book, by the way. I became aware of another time, in By Love and Grace (a nice book, by the way), when someone mentioned it on the List a few months ago. In this book, Tara is raped on a date. And Stansfield makes it abundantly clear that Tara should not go out with this guy. The man, Danny, is a terrible person and is constantly rude to Tara. But she goes anyway. Now everyone knows that it was not her fault that this guy raped her, but what is implied is that if she wasn't stupid and didn't go out with him, it wouldn't have happened. In both books, making it less clear that these were stupid moves on the part of the women would eliminate the blame from them more fully. And contrary to popular belief, it's not always obvious that a man you get involved with now will abuse you later.

More on the writing. The scenes that we see are generally vivid. However, there are some scenes that we don't get to see, that are only vaguely described, that would lend more depth to the novel if they were more detailed. The ones that immediately come to mind are the courtroom scenes, and the scene where Janna tells her bishop for the first time that Russell is beating her. (He doesn't believe her, which is an interesting twist, but it would have been much more dramatic to see it happen instead of only briefly described. And yes, Janna is able to overcome her resulting bitter feelings toward the bishop. Happy endings, here. Not necessarily a bad thing, though I thought it happened too easily.)

Anyway, in spite of my many complaints, I enjoyed the book. (I don't know what that says about me.) I don't know when I'll pick up another Stansfield novel, but I probably will someday. Someday when I'm looking for a good emotional-roller-coaster escape.

(What that may say about me is that I check these books out at the Salt Lake City Public Library. I don't pay money for them. Haven't yet, anyway.)

Katie Parker 
<katie.p@mailcity.com>