Dorothy's Gift

By: Christine Schneider

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Dorothy is content with her life as a wedding seamstress. She loves her two adult children, her husband, and her church. She is gifted with the ability to turn heaps of pink satin, lemon-yellow chiffon, and white lace into exquisite gowns. Her clients are beautiful, well-bred, and pay her well. Dorothy doesn’t like change, but even volunteering at the crisis pregnancy center doesn’t shake her peaceful life too much. She does what she can to offer help to women who are dealing with real, life-changing decisions.

Then Bailey wanders into the clinic: angry, abrasive, and hiding the pain of a dark secret.

In a moment of wild compassion, Dorothy convinces her wonderfully supportive husband, Gary, to allow her to invite Bailey to live with them until the baby is born.

Suddenly, Dorothy’s life is overwhelmed by change, and unable to keep up, Dorothy makes some huge errors in judgment. Instead of helping Bailey, everything Dorothy does seems to hurt the girl more.

Only Dorothy’s son, Daniel, begins to recognize Bailey’s potential, as he sees her reach out to support Dorothy when Gary has a heart attack and her daughter has a miscarriage. Meanwhile, Bailey is suffocated by the realization that this wonderful, loving family would not want her if they knew that she had allowed her first child to be aborted.

As Dorothy sews her way through a year of weddings, Bailey challenges Dorothy’s compassion and points out her lukewarm, Christian hypocrisy. The poor girl doesn’t know how to clean her room, run a washing machine, or cut up a cucumber. In addition, Dorothy’s church doesn’t want “people like Bailey” to taint their youth and college group. Worst of all, her son, Daniel, has decided to try to win the heart of Bailey. As the year progresses, Dorothy is confronted with her own ungodly self-centeredness, lack of spiritual depth, and stubborn resistance to changing her plans for herself and her family.

This is the story of the growth of love between a young woman in need of a mother and a mother with enough love for more than her own two children.

Reviews:
I finished the book because I couldn’t stop reading. I love the story, I love the characters, I love the message, I love the writing style, I love it all. I want to go back so I can better appreciate the character development and story arc. I cried multiple times throughout the book.
—Betty, missionary and missionary wife in Kenya

Carolyn’s Rewrite
The book was hard to put down until it was finished. Dorothy is an empty nester, encouraged by her son to volunteer at a pregnancy center. She does, but struggles some since her gifts to help are not typical to other volunteers. She connects with one woman, Bailey, who has made some bad decisions and needs a role model. The book answers the real question about what is more important in life. –Carolyn, Austria