Samara the Wholehearted

Kelly L. Green is a freelance writer living in Ajax, Ontario.

This enchanting coming-of-age story by a Maritime writer straddles
borders, philosophies, and stages of life. Samara is a rather immature
20-year-old raised in a hothouse environment by older, doting, wealthy,
and intellectual parents. Through strange, fateful twists of
circumstances, she becomes surrogate mother to her young niece and
nephew, and assistant caregiver for a brilliant, severely disabled
university professor. As Samara is plopped into adult responsibilities
and pressures, she develops humility, maturity, and focus. She is the
link of wholehearted love that cements her new “family” together.

Bauer uses a variety of both peculiar and pedestrian characters to move
the plot along. The reader might wish to see a few of these, such as
Samara’s parents, Conway and Carol Bellmont, developed in more detail.
The Bellmonts, along with two other couples, own the rural Maritime
retreat Summerland. Here Samara and two friends, the daughters of the
other couples, have spent their summers exploring nature, reading, and
watching the adults undertake a variety of sometimes bizarre but usually
benign exercises in personal development. While Bauer makes Summerland
the focus of the first two-thirds of the book, Conway and Carol,
creators of its spirit and Samara’s greatest influences, remain
shadowy, even confusing figures.

Bauer’s writing style is both accessible and enjoyable, but certainly
not simplistic. Samara herself is a kind of Everywoman, the
personification of the potential for good in all of us. Her name brings
to mind the self-sacrificing Samaritan. The author goes to great lengths
to show, however, that this potential is not fulfilled without loving
care from others. One of her beliefs seems to be that much can be
expected of those to whom much has been given.

It is significant that Summerland is in Canada. The nationality of the
characters is often not made clear, and the characters move back and
forth across the border without remark, but Canada provides the setting
for healing and renewal, as well as for the development of alternative
ideas and philosophies.

Samara the Wholehearted will be enjoyed by any reader of fine fiction,
but it deserves a particularly strong recommendation for young women.