The Marriage Bed

Joelle Weber may have come from the poor section of town, but she was not a tramp. When her boyfriend pressured her to have sex, she finally gave in just before we he went off to college, and her one night of giving in has left her pregnant. Her boyfriend wants nothing to do with her baby; he tells her to get an abortion and leaves her to fend for herself. JoJo finds herself turning to Bobby DiFranco her best friend and confident.

Bobby wants only the best for his friend. He doesn’t want her to give up the baby she desperately wants to keep, and both of them know how hard raising a child as a single woman in the 70’s is going to be. Bobby proposes to JoJo asking her to marry him for her baby’s sake, as well as his own. He is about to be shipped off to the Vietnam War and wants to know someone is waiting on him to come home.

Joelle and Bobby’s story comes together as they find their lives growing and they manage to have a family together. When Joelle names her baby Claudia after Bobby’s late mother, she knows she loves her childhood friend with all her heart, but neither manage to say the words – until it is almost too late.

THE MARRIAGE BED is a true story of love. Joelle is a wonderful wife and mother who finds herself put in a situation where she can only do what she thinks is best for those she loves the most. Over and over her trials show her strength and turn her into a woman every woman will find fascinating. She didn’t let life get her down, instead she turned her dreams into reality and managed to get a college degree, have a family, and find a man she loves.

Judith Arnold is a talented writer who brings not only her heroine to live but her hero as well. Bobby comes alive as first the town bad boy, then as a man who has been broken and battered by the Vietnam War. His homecoming is momentous and his overcoming the past is a true overcoming when he makes good on his promise to be the man Joelle deserves. He finds himself running a successful business that he created from the ground up, and when his world is shaken up he reacts the only way he knows how, yet his love for his family brings him back to reality and lets him grow as a man and a husband.

The seventh installment to the Harlequin Everlasting Lover Series is truly a keeper on this reader’s shelf. The characters are lively and honest, they will hold onto this reader’s heart for a long time to come.

April 2007