Forty-year-old Sandy Richards is a successful music teacher, wife, and mother living a comfortable middle-class life in a smallMidwestern town. But behind her warm smile and easy laugh is a heavy burden she cannot release.
During her childhood, Sandy (or Shadow as just about everyone knew her) was inseparable from her larger-than-lifefather, a World War II hero she adored. Sandy followed him everywhere, hung on his every word, and loved him with all herheart as only a young child can. It was more difficult to love him at some times than at others, especially when he was thereand then he was gone right in front of her eyes without ever leaving the house.
For reasons she would not fully understand until many years later, something went horribly wrong and their relationshipfractured, seemingly forever, when her father died of lung cancer on one long, hot summer evening. His passing left Shadowalone to sort through his warehouse of junk, an old storage facility jammed with emotions so overwhelming they balancedher on the edge of suicide. Then, when and where she needed him most, a stranger entered her life. And everything changedonce more.
The Final Service offers a riveting story about human nature, emotional abandonment, and how unfulfilled dreams left amiddle-aged woman on the brink of personal destruction until one event forever altered the core of her belief system and herlife. It is a story of faith, family, and forgiveness, and the realization that forces larger and more powerful than ourselves are atwork in our lives in ways we are unable to fully understand."