Dan Walshs' and Gary Smalleys' The Dance ~ Reviewed

The Dance
By Dan Walsh and Gary Smalley
Published by: Revell
ISBN# 978-0-8007-248-0
352 Pages
Back Cover: 

Jim Anderson is a successful businessman, and his wife, Marilyn, is the perfect wife. And why wouldn't she be? He gives her
everything she needs. That's why Jim never expected to come home one day and find Marilyn gone.
 
After 27 years of marriage, Marilyn has had enough of feeling unloved and neglected. She wants to experience some measure of happiness before she's too old to enjoy it, even signing up for dance lessons, something Jim would never do. What will it take for Jim to finally become the man Marilyn needs him to be?
Review: 

I’m thankful for the review copy written by a dynamic writing
team. Gary Smalley’s marriage counseling experience combined with Dan’s writing style creates three dimensional characters you instantly care about wrapped in a topic that will grab your heart.
The divorce rate for Christians is about the same as everyone else on the planet, the story shows how any marriage can break down. The novel opens with Jim Anderson, he’s angry his wife left him and says to himself, “She’s got a gorgeous house, a nice car to drive, and a huge closet full of clothes. We hardly ever argue. When did they start to have problems? What in the world did his wife have to be unhappy about?...She can’t just walk out. We’re both believers, for heaven’s sake! She doesn’t have biblical grounds for divorce…he couldn’t believe he had to eat his dinner at a fast food place, another consequence of his wife’s selfishness.”

Marilyn, Jim’s wife can’t believe she had the courage to leave. She’d been unhappy for years. She tried to tell her husband but he was never home. He was married to his job. She decided to do something she always wanted to do and that was learn to dance. She signed up for lessons. There were a few things she wanted to experience in life and learning to dance was one of them.
Will Jim and Marilyn Anderson give their marriage another chance?
Could God work a miracle? Where either of them willing to do whatever it took to resurrect their marriage? Their grown children are not as surprised as their father about their split, especially their
daughter.
  
Both Gary Smalley and Dan Walsh have experienced pain in their
marriage relationships and say they can relate to the main character
Jim Anderson. Dan writes in the beginning of the book, “To Gary, whose first book rescued my marriage thirty years ago.” Gary Smalley gets real about his marriage relationship and how he could relate to Jim too and his struggles. I appreciate the fact that both men were transparent in the author interview at the end of the book where Dan interviews Gary about writing The Dance.

They tell of how God can pick up the broken pieces of our lives and
put them back together in the most surprising and amazing ways. I
highly recommend this book for everyone especially book clubs, there is so much to discuss. It’s a book that will tug at your heart and have you look at relationships and family with new eyes.

Reviewed by: Nora St.Laurent
TBCN Where Book Fun Begins