Lauren Trundle is a teenage, unwed mother. Unfortunately, in today's world that's not the travesty it was years ago, but the family is feeling the effects. Becky, her mom, quit work to care for Lauren's son so Lauren could finish high school. The whole family is bearing the burden on top of other recent catastrophic happenings. Becky's son was killed in Iraq and now her husband, Gil, loses his job when the company he works for goes bankrupt. They feel like they have hit rock bottom.

Ivy Carrington works in an old folks' home where she cares for Anna Grissom. Ivy's boyfriend, Drew, has shipped out to fight in the Korean War. Anna guesses that Ivy is with child. Drew is not aware of Ivy's situation. Anna begins to tell Ivy her life's story about the home for unwed mothers she established in the 1880s. She encourages Anna to write Drew and tell him about their baby. When Ivy finally does, she gets no reply. And when the nursing home discovers Ivy's secret, they fire her. In the 1950s, society considered being an unwed mother a travesty.

WHEN THE MORNING GLORY BLOOMS is a beautiful story about God's love, mercy and grace. Choices that we make can destroy our future, change relationships and rewrite our dreams. Cynthia Ruchti has blended the past and present in a compelling story that speaks of the love of God and His grace that sees us through the tough times in life. She weaves the two stories together at the end and brings Lauren and Ivy to the same location. Perhaps Lauren will learn some valuable lessons from Ivy, just as Ivy learned from Anna. WHEN THE MORNING GLORY BLOOMS is a touching story with strong, true-to-life characters; a great read you will not want to miss.

Book Summary

Becky rocks a baby that rocked her world. Sixty years earlier, with her fiancé Drew in the middle of the Korean Conflict, Ivy throws herself into her work at a nursing home to keep her sanity and provide for the child Drew doesn't know is coming. Ivy cares for Anna, an elderly patient who taxes Ivy's listening ear until the day she suspects Anna's tall tales are not the ramblings of dementia. They're fragments of Anna's disjointed memories of a remarkable life.

Finding a faint thread of hope she can't resist tugging, Ivy records Anna's memoir, scribbling furiously after hours to keep up with the woman's emotion-packed, grace-hemmed stories. Is Ivy's answer buried in Anna's past? Becky, Ivy, Anna--three women fight a tangled vine of deception in search of the blossoming simplicity of truth.