Fields of Clover sets forth its theme in a quote from the Apocrypha included just after the dedication page:

My child, help your father in his old age,
And do not grieve him, as long as he lives.
If his understanding fails, be considerate.
And do not humiliate him, when you are in all your strength.

It's a book that tackles some important and timely themes: caring for aging parents, and the ties that bind a family together past all understanding. But in the end it was a book that frustrated me as a reader. "Uneven" would be my one word synopsis.

The book reminded me somewhat of Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. It changed point of view in each chapter, moving from the 93 year old Oscar Carpenter and his equally elderly wife, Edith, to each of their three off-spring, as well as some minor characters. The POV shifts weren't confusing, but it was obvious that the author was more comfortable in some minds than others. Some of the characters were fully fleshed out and compelling. Others seemed like little more than plot devices to tie something of an LDS theme into the book.

Marilyn Arnold is at her best when writing the rambling thought processes of senile Oscar Carpenter. Edith, his wife, is also brilliantly drawn. In fact, many of Edith's musings were "a-ha" moments for me, making me want to read them again just to savor them.

For instance, when she's mentally deconstructing her house and all the items her daughter, Stella, will be forced to sort through and dispose of now that Oscar and Edith have been placed in an extended care facility, Edith thinks about some old army footlockers in the basement. "Edith knew what the lockers contained, even though it had been years since she had bothered to clear their lids and open them. Ghosts, she muttered silently. Like the house itself, those lockers are full of ghosts from a life that died before we did."

Arnold has captured the poignant winding down of two lives and deftly uses that passage to reunite the three estranged Carpenter children -- Everett, Stella, and Joshua. However, the book is weakest when we spend too much time in Stella's point of view. Stella is a character with definite quirks, but they remained unexplained. Why does she have such poor marriages? She doesn't take much care of her physical self, often described as frumpy through the eyes of other characters. We really want to like her, to empathize with her, but in the end, the information is too scarce to really understand her. We know she writes trashy novels, that she has a history of being late on her pot-boiler deadlines, that she can't keep a marriage together (but whether from poor choices in mates, or her own deficiencies we're never sure), that she keeps dogs. Stella seemed to me the plot-device the author uses to make unnecessary pronouncements that come across in a natural way in the story and don't need to be reiterated to the reader. "On the instant, Stella knew, as if Edith Carpenter had appeared in heavenly robes and said it, the meaning of her parents' long and difficult journey to final release." And then the author tells us what she just spent 279 pages showing us. Moments like that frustrated me and made me less accepting of Stella as a character -- a dangerous thing, since most of the book is told through Stella's eyes.

But there were many strong moments in the book, moments that made me think about my own responsibilities towards my parents and in-laws. Moments that helped me see beauty in a fully-lived life and clarified what is truly important. One of the best changes of heart in the book comes though the oldest brother, Everett Carpenter. A stuffed-shirt academic, a snob, a satirical critic; one is set to dislike Everett thoroughly. In the end, he was softened by the experience. I liked Everett by the end of the book. He was real. In contrast, my feelings toward Stella remained ambiguous at best.

One small time-line issue bothered me throughout the book. Everett, Joshua and Stella are described as "middle aged". Their parents are in their early 90's. If the Carpenter children are in their late 40's and 50's, that means Edith Carpenter started having children in her late 40's and 50's. If the author considers 60's to be middle aged, the children don't ring true. Their concerns with jobs/children/spouses lead me to believe they are in their mid to late 40's, early 50's, but not their 60's. If so, they are the most emotionally stuck and immature 60-something's I've encountered. One would hope life would teach a person more by their sixth decade. Why doesn't the author make this clear? There was no explanation offered as to why the Carpenters married and had children later in life, if indeed that's the author's intent. As a reader, I long for books that create a dream that I don't wake easily from. The age issue was one thing that continually broke into "the dream" for me and made me aware of the author, forcing me to question, to skim back to see if I'd missed something.

Another thing that struck me as strange in a book of LDS fiction was the lack of any LDS references. I'm not sure how I feel about it. At first, I was impressed, thinking "at last, a book that weaves the LDS mindset so subtly into the plot, you don't notice it." But by the end of the book, I realized this book only has one very minor LDS character in it, and I was left wondering why the author felt the need to include that. Religion is not a priority in the book, but it is subtly present in the background. I don't mind that -- in fact, I cheer it, but I was left thinking "Hmmm. I guess this is not LDS fiction after all." Perhaps that was Marilyn Arnold's goal, to write a book with more "universal appeal". It seems to me that the publishing house and distribution channels of this book may not jive with that goal.

Or is it a "western" book -- as in the Wallace Stegner western tradition? The book IS set in rural areas of Colorado and Arizona. But the sense of place isn't tremendously important to the book either. It's a book about aging, a human condition that could have taken place anywhere, with any set of cultural beliefs. Maybe that was the author's point.

All in all, I would recommend any middle-aged adult with aging parents read the book. I'll bet you're more kind, patient and caring of those parents as a result. What more could an author aspire to -- to change the world for the better?