TROUBLED WATERS BY RENE GUTTERIDGE

TROUBLED WATERS by RENE GUTTERIDGE is a book about relationships, forgiveness and restoration.
Macille (Macey) Steigel is a successful news anchor, with the chance of getting into television broadcasting in New York, but she is neither happy nor fulfilled.  Her inability to sustain relationships is largely caused by a secret which keeps her tied to her past.
She was brought up by loving Christian parents on a farm in a small tight-knit community.  Her father, a godly man and a deacon in the church, had very strict rules about right and wrong, and, when she overstepped the mark, he reacted in anger and condemnation.  Macey is devastated by this rejection and leaves home at seventeen to make a new life for herself.  She turns away from the faith of her youth as she failed to see love and forgiveness in her father, the man who she wanted to please above all and by whom she had always felt loved and accepted until she failed to meet his standards, and wants nothing to do with God if He is anything like her father!
Her feelings are conflicted when she gets a message that her father has died, but she goes back to her childhood home for the funeral to be with her mother, Evelyn.
Evelyn has been praying for years that her husband and daughter will be reconciled, for she knows things that Macey has never known, and is angry that her prayers are unanswered.  However, her joy at seeing Macey again and the loving support and wise counsel of her friend Patricia, who had nursed her husband Jess until he died, make her realize that the Lord is indeed in control and His ways are not our ways.
Noah and his twin girls, with their unashamed love for the Lord and their desire that all should  come to know Him, have a lot to do with her restoration.  
It is a sensitively and beautifully written novel with believable characters. We learn a great deal about human nature and the importance of not trying to make things better in our own strength, which often makes things worse, and also of not being quick in jumping to conclusions.
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