The Crooked Path

By: Irma Joubert

Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman

Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's Summary

As retired physician Lettie Louw looks back upon her life, she recounts her coming of age in WWII-era South Africa in this compelling story of delayed love, loss, and reconciliation.

Lettie Louw is the daughter of the town physician in their South African village. She spends her childhood in the warm African days playing with her friends and being adored by her doting parents. When she becomes a teenager, she experiences her first taste of unrequited romantic love in the form of her best friend's older brother, De Wet Fourie. When De Wet pursues the beautiful and wealthy Annabelle, Lettie's dreams are crushed, and she moves to Johannesburg to pursue her studies in medicine.

Life in Johannesburg feels strange to Lettie, and the world around her is in profound upheaval as the Second World War rages. Her feelings for De Wet never waver, and Lettie is heartbroken when he marries another of her childhood friends. Lettie soon meets Marco Romanelli, an Italian immigrant, and they marry and raise two daughters as the racial and political tensions in South Africa swirl about them.

Lettie never forgets her first love, even as the ravages of time, war, and illness play upon her life and the lives of those she loves. In their later years, Lettie and De Wet are thrown into one another's company again, and they are given another chance at a life together.

©2017 Irma Joubert (P)2017 Thomas Nelson

Would make a good movie, but not her most interesting book

As many reviewers have said, this book is a young adult romance novel. It’s a sweet story in that regard, but the long description of the time spent in hiding during the war, and deaths of those who hid is depressing and doesn’t fit with the lighter themes of young love. I had to skip that part as it got depressing. Also, most of the book drones on and on. If the book were shortened to be made into a two hour movie, with the part about the war just summarized, it would be five stars. The dances and descriptions of the time period were very good. And the reader did a good job also.