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Glen Oak #1
A Furrow So Deep
After thirteen long years, Karen Braden returns home to inherit her grandmother’s bed and breakfast, hoping it will provide the kind of future she wants for herself and her daughter. There’s only one problem—she’ll have to face the past and the one man she’s never stopped Dean Anderson. In the years following Karen’s hasty and unexplained departure, Dean built a portfolio of auto dealerships, yet he remains unfulfilled. When he sees Karen again, his hurt resurfaces, clashing with the love he’s always had for her. Determined to find out why she left him all those years ago, Dean discovers there’s more at stake than just getting answers. As the truth begins to unravel, Dean and Karen must decide if they can forgive past transgressions and trust God to help them forge a future, better than either could ever anticipate.
403 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2017
About the author
Penelope Powell
4 books18 followersPenelope grew up in Tennessee, but has lived in various states and a few countries outside the United States. She holds a BS in Business/Political Science and a MS in Multinational Commerce from Boston University.
After working in the field of banking and finance, she left to invest her time with her children at home, and occasionally worked as a substitute teacher. Today, she's an empty nester, and back to her old stomping grounds.
An avid reader of fiction and perpetual student of Biblical truth, she is pursing the life of a writer. She believes her roots, faith, and her experiences with other places and cultures all meld into the voice that splashes onto the pages of her novels.
After working in the field of banking and finance, she left to invest her time with her children at home, and occasionally worked as a substitute teacher. Today, she's an empty nester, and back to her old stomping grounds.
An avid reader of fiction and perpetual student of Biblical truth, she is pursing the life of a writer. She believes her roots, faith, and her experiences with other places and cultures all meld into the voice that splashes onto the pages of her novels.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 10, 2020
Faith
What a heartfelt novel. Dean and Karen have been through so much in their lives. Mistakes, secrets, misunderstandings, and regrets have been a part of their lives,for so long, it takes, CHRIST to do a complete transformation in each of their lives. What a wonderful and amazing job CHRIST did!
What a heartfelt novel. Dean and Karen have been through so much in their lives. Mistakes, secrets, misunderstandings, and regrets have been a part of their lives,for so long, it takes, CHRIST to do a complete transformation in each of their lives. What a wonderful and amazing job CHRIST did!
October 17, 2020
Wonderful book.
This book touched my heart. It will be placed in my favorites collection and read over and over. Hope this will help readers give this Christian writer a chance so she will write more touching novels.
This book touched my heart. It will be placed in my favorites collection and read over and over. Hope this will help readers give this Christian writer a chance so she will write more touching novels.
July 15, 2025
I really enjoyed this book. I have the second one lined up to read in a couple of months. There is a third book in the series but they seem to be out of print & unavailable so sadly i won’t be able to read book 3 but i look forward to Gloria’s story in book 2
August 25, 2017
From the very beginning, I was pulled into this story. Karen and Deans story, along with the other characters are so relatable to our lives that I was in tears at times, laughed with them and just enjoyed their "company".
A beautiful story of forgiveness, a family restored and friendships made.
A beautiful story of forgiveness, a family restored and friendships made.
May 2, 2018
I really enjoyed this book! I liked the characters and the clean romance.
March 24, 2019
Anger Management
Loved the way Bobby turned people around and got them thinking about to get rid of their anger in such a soft but very effective way. Very captivating story.
Loved the way Bobby turned people around and got them thinking about to get rid of their anger in such a soft but very effective way. Very captivating story.
August 11, 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed this well written Christian romance. It has all of the elements I require in a good novel. The characters were well developed and seemed like real people. Dean, for example, was a man with a good heart but with serious character problems. The plot was the typical one for a romance but had enough depth that it was enjoyable and not trite.
I like it when a novel is informative and this one highlights some good moral lessons. It certainly shows the devastating consequences of casual sex. But the aspect of the novel I liked the best was how it illustrates God working in the lives of people in the midst of life's messiness, even if that messiness is because of one's own wrong choices.
I recommend this novel to those who would like to read about God redeeming sinful actions and their consequences. God is loving, forgiving, and redeeming and Powell has done a good job showing how God might show Himself in all those ways. A salvation experience is clearly presented, for example.
I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.
I like it when a novel is informative and this one highlights some good moral lessons. It certainly shows the devastating consequences of casual sex. But the aspect of the novel I liked the best was how it illustrates God working in the lives of people in the midst of life's messiness, even if that messiness is because of one's own wrong choices.
I recommend this novel to those who would like to read about God redeeming sinful actions and their consequences. God is loving, forgiving, and redeeming and Powell has done a good job showing how God might show Himself in all those ways. A salvation experience is clearly presented, for example.
I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.
September 20, 2020
Good
A book that brings people together that haven't seen each other in years and have a past history.they need to.
A book that brings people together that haven't seen each other in years and have a past history.they need to.
Read
December 4, 2018I go through phases with secret baby plots. I really enjoyed the first couple I read, but that was partly because I read them several years ago, before it became so easy to follow (stalk) friends (and ex-friends) online. But with more modern secret baby stories, the author has to work harder and harder to convince me that the man really wouldn't know his ex had been pregnant with his child. It generally means she's kept secret information that should have been shared with the father, and that doesn't give me good feelings about her as a character. #YMMV
So that's a couple of obstacles a secret baby novel has to overcome. The novel that did this best was when the mother turned up on the cruise ship the father worked on, managed to see him face to face, and told him about the babies (six-month-old twins). He went all alpha male and raged at her for not telling him. She dumped two oversized folders on his lap with copies of all the letters and emails she'd send over the last year ... all of which he'd ignored. #MicDrop
Yes. That worked.
A Furrow So Deep? Not so much.
Yes, there was a mention that she'd blocked him on social media (after his father gave her an ultimatum), but really? He gave up when he realized they weren't Facebook friends any more? He didn't ask any of her friends where she was? He didn't create a fake account to try and follow her? He didn't get any of his friends to friend or follow her? #YeahNah
But let’s leave aside the fact the setup doesn't work for me and concentrate on the story. The first half was a lot of Karen dancing around and not telling Dean that Emily was his daughter. Then we have them both not telling Emily Dean is her father. She was a too-perfect teenager. Her only fault was that she appeared intelligent, yet she never did the math and worked out her mother must have fallen pregnant in high school).
The writing was solid, although there was plenty of room for improvement (which was my complaint with the last book I read from this small publisher. Their covers and editing aren't up to the standard of the best self-published authors, let alone the major publishers).
I found the plot dragged in places and was too predictable in others. Yes, it's a romance, which means we know how it's going to end. In romance, we're reading for the journey ... which was too predictable, not helped by the pot pourri of romance tropes, all of which have predictable patterns. Secret baby? Check. Other woman? Check. Christian BFF? Check. Kindly pastor? Check. And a few others I won't share because *spoilers*.
My main problems were that Karen was too perfect, and Dean wasn't especially likeable (especially in the first half). Too much of the plot was focused on the external, with almost nothing on Karen's internal character journey. We got more on Dean's journey to faith, but it was all too predictable.
On the plus side, I get annoyed with Christian romances where the couple are unequally yoked because the Christian character forms an emotional attachment with the non-Christian. A Furrow So Deep didn't make that mistake. Well, Karen had obviously made that mistake in the past, but she'd learned her lesson. Good one, Karen. But that wasn't enough to rescue a novel that had potential but was a struggle to read because I found it hard to care about the characters.
Overall, I think this would have made a solid novella (without Gloria). But there wasn't enough conflict or character development to sustain interest for a full-length novel.
So that's a couple of obstacles a secret baby novel has to overcome. The novel that did this best was when the mother turned up on the cruise ship the father worked on, managed to see him face to face, and told him about the babies (six-month-old twins). He went all alpha male and raged at her for not telling him. She dumped two oversized folders on his lap with copies of all the letters and emails she'd send over the last year ... all of which he'd ignored. #MicDrop
Yes. That worked.
A Furrow So Deep? Not so much.
Yes, there was a mention that she'd blocked him on social media (after his father gave her an ultimatum), but really? He gave up when he realized they weren't Facebook friends any more? He didn't ask any of her friends where she was? He didn't create a fake account to try and follow her? He didn't get any of his friends to friend or follow her? #YeahNah
But let’s leave aside the fact the setup doesn't work for me and concentrate on the story. The first half was a lot of Karen dancing around and not telling Dean that Emily was his daughter. Then we have them both not telling Emily Dean is her father. She was a too-perfect teenager. Her only fault was that she appeared intelligent, yet she never did the math and worked out her mother must have fallen pregnant in high school).
The writing was solid, although there was plenty of room for improvement (which was my complaint with the last book I read from this small publisher. Their covers and editing aren't up to the standard of the best self-published authors, let alone the major publishers).
I found the plot dragged in places and was too predictable in others. Yes, it's a romance, which means we know how it's going to end. In romance, we're reading for the journey ... which was too predictable, not helped by the pot pourri of romance tropes, all of which have predictable patterns. Secret baby? Check. Other woman? Check. Christian BFF? Check. Kindly pastor? Check. And a few others I won't share because *spoilers*.
My main problems were that Karen was too perfect, and Dean wasn't especially likeable (especially in the first half). Too much of the plot was focused on the external, with almost nothing on Karen's internal character journey. We got more on Dean's journey to faith, but it was all too predictable.
On the plus side, I get annoyed with Christian romances where the couple are unequally yoked because the Christian character forms an emotional attachment with the non-Christian. A Furrow So Deep didn't make that mistake. Well, Karen had obviously made that mistake in the past, but she'd learned her lesson. Good one, Karen. But that wasn't enough to rescue a novel that had potential but was a struggle to read because I found it hard to care about the characters.
Overall, I think this would have made a solid novella (without Gloria). But there wasn't enough conflict or character development to sustain interest for a full-length novel.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews