William Schreiber is an author and screenwriter who earned the 2019 Rising Star Award from the Women’s Fiction Writers Association for his novel “Someone to Watch Over.” The book was adapted from his original screenplay, which has won or been nominated for many competition awards, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, as well as numerous Best Screenplay awards at film festivals throughout the country. A life-affirming story about faith in second chances, “Someone to Watch Over” is the multi-generational story about Eleanor “Lennie” Riley’s quest to find her only child, secretly taken from her by a powerful family two decades ago; a journey that leads to a string of mysterious encounters in the Appalachian Mountains. It was inspired by the unexpected death of William’s father and his family asking him to write and deliver his eulogy.

“Someone to Watch Over” begins as Eleanor Grace Riley, aka Lennie, is returning to Mosely, Tennessee hoping to reconcile with her aging father and learn from him the fate of the now-grown child he forced her to give up as a teenager. She had a difficult childhood right from the start; her mother dies delivering her and at seventeen she leaves town with a terrible secret about her teenage pregnancy.  Before she has a chance to make contact with her father, her brother John informs her that he has died. Crushed, but nevertheless determined, Lennie sets out to find answers on her own.  After she learns about guardakin angels in a distant corner of the Appalachian Mountains who can connect deceased parents with their children, it renews her hope of finding her child. John has planned a road trip to recreate one of their father’s vacations when they were kids as a way to remember him but Lennie only sees the trip as a way to find a guardakin angel. John comes across as aloof and distant and his and Lennie’s relationship is strained but he hesitantly agrees to let Lennie come along. The trip is anything but a smooth ride, but along the way, Lennie learns what happened to her daughter Michelle and reconnects with her while she and John finally become a family again after being separated for twenty years.

No matter how happy and put-together families look from the outside, they all carry their share of baggage. Even though Lennie and John come from the same family, they each had different experiences growing up which included the relationship they had with their father.  Because of this, they grieve in their own way without taking into consideration what the other’s memories of the father could be. This is an important point to be learned from “Someone to Watch Over,” that we should always strive to consider other people’s points of view and experiences so we can better understand them. The story is narrated in alternate points of view between Lennie and John, so the reader is always aware of their thoughts and opinions. It reads like a modern day piece of American literature, with poetic language “She set her acoustic aside and ripped up her pages of poetry, letting the shreds fall like ashes to the bed” that flows through the pages and makes the action deeper and more meaningful. This feel-good, heart warming novel is a must read and deserves a spot among literature’s best-loved works. “Someone to Watch Over,” the story of one family’s hard earned reconnection after much needed healing and forgiveness, is highly recommended for readers who appreciate reading about second chances.

“Lennie leaned out the window as the tow truck slogged up a woodsy mountain road, the night air soothing her as the moon played hide ‘n’ seek among the towering trees.”

*The author received a copy of this book for an honest review. The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to her.