I Loved Her Enough

Chance, Tragedy, Love, and Fresh Air

By: Diane Lane

Narrated by: Sarah Seltz

It's a most unusual story. Father was gone, and Mother was dying from TB. That left Grandmother Anna, who was older than dirt, trying to raise three little girls without two nickels to rub together. It was 1933, in the middle of the depression. We lived in Queens, NY, and let me tell you, times were hard.

I was five years old when The Fresh Air Fund’s summer program had an unexpected opening. Those two weeks I spent in Delaware changed my life forever.

Reliving that year, as I remembered going from NY to DE and back again, provided an unfamiliar twist. I discovered what I believed to have been a tragic and complex time unfolded as a wonderful love story. How healing it was for me to see, for the first time, the beauty of my childhood through the wisdom of these old adult eyes.

This is based on a true story. It is touching and reminds us that even in the darkest of situations, answers and change arrive, sometimes in surprising ways. Listeners are touched and left wanting more!

©2019, 2020 Diane H Lane (P)2023 Diane H Lane

Critic reviews

"You better have your tissues ready." (Eilleen Jandreau Spence)

God in the details

The reader did a fabulous job. I felt apart of the story like a fly on the wall. It’s a beautiful story of love and brought tears to my eyes. There are many great life lessons shared and opportunities to ponder whats most important in life, a personal question each can only answer for themselves. I loved the book club questions in the back of the book as well. They were all very thought provoking. I do wish the author went into more details about the lives of grandmother, Marie, and Gene as a follow up.

What a Beautiful Story

Real. Beautiful. Inspiring. Redemptive. I’m not sure I can express how much I love this story!

Nothing but love

This was a beautiful story and beautifully read ! The reader brought so much feeling to the story. Both sad and happy tears.

One Star - truly awful

I’m baffled anyone could give this book more than one star. It was silly, sappy, and sophomorically written. I should have stopped the moment “Father” arbitrarily changed the child’s name tags — a clear signal of how absurd things would become. Asking a child to call two strangers “Mother” and “Father” minutes after meeting them? That was another red flag.

What truly pushed it into the realm of the ridiculous was the complete lack of concern shown for the child’s real family. Two supposedly kind adults take in a girl during the Great Depression, knowing she has siblings and a grandmother “poor as a church mouse,” and do nothing to help them. Instead, they lavish the one child with hotels, meals, and custom clothing while the rest of her family shares a blanket to keep warm? It was not heartwarming — it was shameful.

The contrast between Anna having nothing to eat on Christmas while Eileen feasts was especially appalling. Sarah and Byard came off not as compassionate, but as self-absorbed and selfish. This book was not touching or uplifting — it was tone-deaf, unrealistic, and frankly insulting to anyone with common sense or a conscience.