Book Review and Giveaway: Marva Cope by Teddy Jones

Marva Cope is the fourth in Teddy Jones’s Jackson’s Pond series. As I’m prone to do, I’m jumping into the series in the middle!

The book starts with Marva moving in with her Aunt Violet in the small town of Jackson’s Pond, Texas. We get Marva’s story in flashbacks and conversations, over games of Scrabble with Aunt Violet, in Marva’s internal thoughts as she takes her walks around town.

Growing up, Marva Cope is a pretty average teenager. Trying to make it through school. Getting her older brother Chance to take her for a drive. But when Chance is killed in a freak accident on their farm, life changes. Marva struggles with his death and with feeling like it was somehow her fault. Her father sinks deeper into depression. Her mother is bitter, and nothing Marva does ever measures up. She heads off to college when she graduates high school and never looks back, and she leaves home a bit of a loner, reliant on herself and not one to ask for or expect help. Life has taught her not to expect much from other people.

Against the advice of her dorm-mate (and the closest thing to a friend Marva has), Marva leaves school and follows a cowboy out on the open road, going where life takes them. When she finds herself a single mother, left high and dry by that cowboy to manage a ranch on her own, she knows something has to change. She is slowly beginning to realize that perhaps other people can have her best interests at heart, and she hopes Violet will take her in, at least until she gets back on her feet.

This is a wonderful story! It seems weird to call it a “coming of age” story, since Marva is in her fifties, but it really is. Life and time formed Marva’s perspective, and it took more life and more time to shift that viewpoint. Age is no indicator of maturity or wisdom, and it takes Marva a little extra time to learn some important lessons.

Teddy Jones writes some delightful characters. There are a handful of lesser characters that aren’t real likable (and I include Marva’s mother in this bunch, because she isn’t terribly involved in the story once Marva leaves home), but almost all of the ones I think of as main characters, even with their flaws, have something about them to like. Other than Marva, I think Aunt Violet is my favorite. She’s a lot like Marva, very independent and a little unconventional. I love that she’s a Scrabble fiend! I would totally sit down and play with her, and I think it would be a heck of a game.

I found it interesting that Marva felt like she didn’t remember a lot of things in her life that maybe she should have. I’ve felt that way before. There are big swaths of life where I know things happened, life went on day to day, but I couldn’t give you any details. I like the way Jones has Stacey, Marva’s former dorm-mate who she gets reacquainted with, explain that feeling: “I think it’s because we don’t remember the chronology of our lives, we remember events. I don’t only mean events in the typical sense, like a big party, a graduation, a birth, but also interpersonal things that were BIG to us for a reason.” She goes on to say, “Maybe we’re all that way. The day-to-day disappears pretty quickly, the things that hurt us last a long time.” That makes sense to me, although I hope the things that help us and heal us make a lasting impression, too.

The ending of the story isn’t all tied up neatly with a bow. It’s a little bit of an open ending, and it’s left to the reader to imagine what may come next for Marva. I’m curious to see what unfolds next in Jackson’s Pond! I’m also curious to read the first three books in the series to see whether we learn more about Marva’s family or whether the focus is on other residents of the town.

I highly recommend Marva Cope for anyone who loves a good story about a wanderer finding her way home.