Sunshine and Shadow [Large Print] (Hardcover)

Thirty-something Benni Harper is the perfect hausfrau: cooking, volunteering, promising her dirty dishes that she'll meet them later, and making jokes with her friends about how "all men are the same." She's also unremittingly--cloyingly--sweet, good, and patient. At one point she tackles this really obnoxious woman, and for just a moment I thought she had snapped from the pressure of trying to be perfect and had resorted to violence to make the woman shut up. I was somewhat disappointed that this wasn't the case.

In a 1970s flashback, when Benni complains to her first husband about how "things are changing too fast" and "why can't things just stay the same?" she's predicting her later life: living in the 90s but clinging to the 50s. Or perhaps the 1870s. It's difficult to know which decade she'd prefer.

As San Celina prepares for its annual Fiesta Days, both Benni and her husband, Gabe, renew acquaintances with friends from their pasts. When one is murdered and Benni finds herself victimized by a mysterious stalker, Benni and Gabe are forced to remember and confront things they'd rather forget.

_Sunshine and Shadow_ is less a mystery than an exploration of characters and relationships, and the ways events in the past influence the present, both for good and bad. The murder story is more of a device in service to this theme than an end in itself, but I didn't feel cheated. I actually found it refreshing that Ms. Fowler chose to go in a very different direction and treat her characters in very different ways, instead of limiting herself to the same old "Benni is a snoop but it works out okay in the end" story. We see a very different Benni here, one who is forced to face fear and questions of faith in order to find her real strength.

There are a couple of glitches -- noticably that the Internet and cell phones are more prevalent in the world of the book than they really were in 1995 -- but none that detract from the excellence of the storytelling. _Sunshine and Shadow_ is a strong and sensitive addition to the Benni Harper series, one that made me think about it long after the reading was done.