And the Memory Returns

by Susan G. Weidener

For some time, Ava felt the best years of her life ended when Jay died. They seemed the most promising, brimming with excitement and expectation, where anything was possible. In the years after Jay's death, friends, family, and a good dog sustain her. As she looks back on her memories, she begins writing her memoir. What had it all meant? Where does she go from here? Can she put the past behind her? Her best friend's devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer's and the transformational power of international travel lead to surprising revelations and a path forward. Told with beauty and warmth, insight and style, And the Memory Returns captures one woman's journey as she ages and finds healing and redemption.

And the Memory Returns completes the story of Ava Stuart in Susan G. Weidener's debut novel, A Portrait of Love and Honor: A Novel Based on a True Story.

189 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 5, 2022

About the author

Susan G. Weidener is the author of two bestselling memoirs and two novels. She founded the Women's Writing Circle, which meets monthly in suburban Philadelphia and acts as both a writing coach and editing consultant. She has edited and contributed to three anthologies of short stories and poems. "I like to write about our choices as women and our lives, our struggles, and our accomplishments. I also write about the search for love, this quest for passion, renewal, and magic, which is the heart of any romantic. As a former journalist with The Philadelphia Inquirer, I tell a story in a way that makes my books page-turners, contemporary, and relevant."

"My hope now and always is that my stories ring true. If they help others going through similar situations or life events, then I have done my job as a writer."

Reviews

[Laura Engel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was immediately taken in by the main character Ava, in Susan Weidener's novel "The Memory Returns." The author's voice is clear and undeniable, and this story will be truly relatable for so many. The author gives the reader a true gift because it was if I was sharing a cuppa tea with a good friend telling me her story while reading this book. This story grasps the reality of what it is like for a woman who has suffered trauma and devasting loss yet continues to strive to go forward and create a new life. Ava's honest feelings and worries, her travels to forget, and her simple joys in her new life will touch your heart and you will cheer her along as she not only accomplishes that feat and flourishes, but she also learns to live her best life.

[Marian Beaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bittersweet refrain “And the memory returns,” forms the melody line of Susan Weidener’s newest novel (2022). The first time I heard it, I saw a profusion of yellow forsythia bushes in Ava’s own backyard. I saw it again as Ava pondered the ways she has reinvented herself, now a widow in her sixties. Looking back on her many turning points, she observes the ways they have transformed her.

True, Ava is a woman alone. Yet she is not really alone. She has a full life with a loving son, a writing studio; friends, both women and men; the ability to travel—and the memory of the love of a wonderful man Jay, her soul mate.

I enjoyed how Ava’s memory takes us seamlessly back and forth in time, once a twelve-year-old girl in a shiny green raincoat dashing with her dad into a Victorian-style library, where her imagination takes flight along with the great books that will give her sustenance through her entire life. Then, at a writer’s retreat in Tucson, it strikes her that “Happiness—if there was such a thing---came with creating a meaningful life.”

The novel takes readers to places they may never visit in real life. I especially liked riding a camel vicariously in Morocco. The camel comes to life with feet that remind Ava of “mushy gray pancakes, supple, yet strong.” She looks ahead at her son and traveling companion, Ian, astride his own camel, “shadows casting one elongated shape like silly putty stretched out across the pale white beach.” In Australia, she beholds clouds and floating mist draping snow-covered mountains “like so many gauze necklaces.”

Near novel’s end, Ava confronts questions have been brewing throughout the narrative—What did my husband have to die? Why did my best friend get Alzheimer’s? We get the impression our heroine won’t get the answers she would choose. Yet, with eyes and heart wide open, she sees herself surrounded with all the resources she needs to find an authentic soul-life, a rewarding path toward healing and wholeness.

I can heartily recommend And the Memory Returns as a fulfilling sequel to Weidener’s debut novel, A Portrait of Love and Honor. In my opinion, she has earned again a five-star rating.