Reviewer: Terry
I received a review copy
Geneva is a veterinarian that specializes in helping dogs that require rehabilitation-basically bad behaving dogs that just were paired wrong when they were placed in their homes. She is also the mom of two troubled teens and an unwillingly daughter of an alcoholic mother. All the sudden she finds herself trying to work through the hardships of parenting troubled teens, when her mother comes to stay with them and truly just makes the whole job harder. Her husband comes from a very easy going home life where family sticks together but all the bad stuff stays under the rug…so she spends a lot of time defending the need to parent her children with a heavier hand then her husband likes. It’s no wonder she finds working with troubled dogs so much easier then the troubles at home!
The story covers a lot of Geneva’s childhood and many of the reasons why her mother is so troubled years after all her children have grown and her husband long gone.
Throughout the story there are bits of Geneva’s time working with pets, her sister in laws very unruly dog, several dogs she helped at the clinic and of course her own pup Diesel, as well as her sister’s dog from her childhood. So while not the center of the story, her career and deep desire to help each dog find the right place and a happy home is always a part of Geneva’s story; and may very well be why she tries so hard to reach and help those that she loves to the degree she does in this story.
House Broken is a very deep story that covers many issues- how hard it is to do the hard parenting of your teenagers as well as your aging parents, and adult sibling relationships, not to mention coming to terms with the secrets from the past. But also how one woman worked through the murky waters of this time in her life. It was great read and an inspiration for those that struggle with alcoholic parents as well as troubled teens.
4 stars
