A Cleft In The World

A Cleft In The World

by Elizabeth Sumner Wafler  

She Writes Press, 2023

In her previous novel Georgie Girl, Elizabeth Sumner Wafler introduced us to a sensitive girl who grew up in an all-boys school in the South.

At fourteen, Georgie meets Truman Parker, a new student, and falls in love. However, the world and its evils impinge on this idyllic campus and tragedy ensues.

A Cleft in the World opens on Georgie’s forty-fifth birthday. She is now a professor of French at Willa Cather College, an all-girls college in Virginia. Her emotional scars remain with her, and anxiety has robbed her of the ability to ever leave this enclosed, safe campus.

But it is not safe at all when the school’s president announces that the college is deeply in debt. A financial consultant has been called in to investigate. This is none other than Truman Parker. Georgie has not seen him for thirty years. Will their love rekindle, or have the intervening years caused too big a gap to grow between them?

This well-structured novel has several secondary themes threading through it. Serious issues that are talking points in our culture are raised here — racism, feminism, PTSD, and treatment for mental health. As in life, and to continue Georgie’s story in future books, the author leaves some of these issues unresolved.

Elizabeth Sumner Wafler has a gift for creating fully fleshed-out characters full of warmth and tenderness toward others. The reader wants them to achieve their goals and to grow emotionally as they do so. This is classic women’s fiction. I found this story of second chances to be a page-turner and read it right through without stopping.