Customer Reviews

A Thousand Voices (Tending Roses Series #5)

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In this last of the "Tending Roses" series, Lisa Wingate has written a lovely goodbye from characters that we have come to know and love.

Dell, now 20, longs to connect with her half Choctaw Native American heritage and goes in a spur of the moment search to Oklahoma searching for roots in a biological father and family she has never known. As in all journeys for truth, Dell finds this a long, twisting path, meeting the present tribe members while learning of their proud, but beleagured past. "The trails of tears" march crippled this noble lot, but they persevered and remain strong and proud. Paradoxically, Dell's own trip is filled with tears, disappointment, but also success in finding her strength of character. Beautifully written, her struggles carry the reader along, laughing when she laughs, crying when she crys, feeling release when she feels release. The story is a very cathertic event; it was especially poignant to this reader as one who can identify with the need to understand the past in order to accept the present.

I have loved this series so saying good-bye is difficult, but Lisa Wingate made the process so rewarding that it is a bitterweet parting. Each novel progressed in style, form, prose and storyline, which is every reader's hope. Ms. Wingate deserves congratulations on gifting us five books that reaped realization, understanding, acceptance and most importantly Love. Love of oneself, and of the Creator who knew from our conception that their is reason and purpose for each existance.

I look with great anticipation to her next work.

A THOUSAND VOICES by Lisa Wingate
November 15, 2007

Rating **** (4 Stars)

Reading A THOUSAND VOICES by Lisa Wingate was a treat. This is the final book in the Tending Roses series and continues the story of one of the main characters from THE LANGUAGE OF SYCAMORES, Dell Jordan, who was adopted at the age of thirteen after being abandoned by her biological mother. She never knew who her father was, and now at age twenty, she needs some answers. Her adoptive family is loving and close and her memories of the woman she called Grandma Rose will always remain with her. But as she watches her family during a baby shower, and realizes that no one will say HER future babies resembles anyone in this family, she feels that she will never truly belong.

Dell resolves to find her biological family, to search for that father she never knew. She has one clue found on her birth certificate that he was a Native American from Oklahoma. With that information, she travels to the Kiamichi Mountains without telling her adoptive parents, and soon her adventures begin.

After much driving and stopping to ask for directions and a motel room, Dell arrives at a campground with an empty spot where she could park in, just for the night. She has hardly any food with her, not having planned on camping out. As she sits awkwardly alone at a park bench, eating an old candy bar for dinner, she can hear the music being played a few campsites over. Coming from one of the tents, she spies two young Native American children and soon after that, a man's voice breaks into her reverie. He is Jace, the children's father, and the two form a friendship after he invites Dell to his family's party.

Dell slowly gets the information that will lead her to the answers she's been looking for regarding the mystery of her father. In the mean time, she and Jace bond as he helps in her search. And, she feels that for once in her life she can truly say that these are HER people. Somewhere in this group of people are the clues that will lead her to her father, the man that may possibly give her the family she always craved.

This reviewer loved A THOUSAND VOICES just as much as THE LANGUAGE OF SYCAMORES. These are the last two books in the Tending Roses series, and the reader will want to read the entire series after finishing reading this one. Dell Jordan is a standout character who comes across as a naive child, although she is already twenty years old in this book. It isn't apparent whether this was intentional by the author, but it showed how fragile Dell was because she is searching for her father, and that she was so hopeful in finding him that the thought of not succeeding never enters her mind. As far as she's concerned, he's out there waiting for her.

Secondary characters that play an important role are Jace, the man she meets during her travels, a man she envisions having a future with. His children Autumn and Willie play a major role in leading Dell to Jace, and last but not least, Shasta, Jace's sister, plays a nurturing role in Dell's newly found family, someone who feels like a sister to Dell. Of course Dell's adoptive parents Karen and James also play an important part, through flashbacks and phone calls as Dell goes in search of her father.

Dell's need to create a new family for herself, people that LOOKED like her, was touching, but what she finds out about herself during this trip is most important. It's not who we are related to that is family, but who was there for us and took care of us when we needed someone the most. Family is not all about blood ties. Dell's search for her father may lead her to what she is looking for, even though it may not be exactly what she had hoped for.

This reviewer highly recommends A THOUSAND VOICES, the last of the four novels in Lisa Wingate's popular series of books, and hopes that readers who have yet to read the previous three books will not hesitate to check them out as well. - Courtesy of Love Romances and more - M. Lofton

With a voice as authentic and finely penned as any I have read, the author tells a tale that is both achingly sad and quietly triumphant. A Thousand Voices, written by Lisa Wingate, is a skillfully crafted book filled with the language of poets and the heart--simply, yet beautifully told.

" She (Grannie) said every bird in the air came from a thought of God, and so did I.... It's a powerful thing to realize you were put in this world on purpose. It changes the way you feel about everything."

The story of conflicted young woman, filled with love for her adoptive parents, yet longing to know her Native American heritage, A Thousand Voices elegantly expresses the complexity of a journey from love, through fear and disappointment and back again.

A Thousand Voices is one of my favorite kinds of books--it teaches without teaching. For those of us who haven't experienced the pain of not belonging often felt by adoptees, Wingate provides more than information, more than an education. In Dell Jordan, the author gives us someone we can love. And love changes us forever. Dell personalizes the angst of adoption, the bigotry felt by Native Americans, the longing for roots that many of us take for granted-and I love her for that.

It's said we all need roots and wings. I think that may be true for books as well. And A Thousand Voices has both. It's rooted in honest feelings and soars on wings of faith and compassion. The rare experience this book delivers-- to be entertained, educated, and fall in love--is what we all hope for every time we open the pages of a new book.

Armchair Interviews says: Want great writing filled with emotions, this 5-star story is for you.

In Kansas, Dell Jordan was adopted by loving mentoring parents when she was thirteen years old. Her new family encouraged her to study music and she proved to be very talented. After high school Dell toured Europe playing with an orchestra and performed humanitarian volunteer work in the Ukraine. Coming home to Kansas after over a year abroad, a scholarship to Juilliard awaits the nineteen year old.

However, Dell has issues that her work at the Ukrainian orphanage has her pondering. She needs to know why her biological mother deserted her and who sired her. She travels to Oklahoma as she knows her father is a member of the Choctaw Nation. In the Sooner State, Dell meets the Reids and is especially attracted to widower Jace Reid, a history teacher raising two young children.

Dell's quest keeps the tale focused as she (and readers) learns much about the modern day Choctaw Nation. Her attraction to Jace and his kids enhance her quest to know who she comes from as she admires the teacher for being a single parent raising his children with love. Lisa Wingate provides a warm character study of a fully developed individual seeking her roots.

Harriet Klausner

A awsome book... want her to write another one to follow up on this one... please give us more of Tending Roses Series...

I read all 5 of the series and enjoyed everyone of them. I was sad when there was not a #6. I highly recommend them. It makes you want to work harder at having good family relations.

The final chapter in the wonderful series Tending Roses drew the circle together of the characters that had truly come to life. I found myself really caring about each and every one.

Adopted at thirteen into a loving and nurturing family, Dell Jordan cannot shake the need to know why her mother abandoned her and who her biological father could be.
Now at nineteen, with a year of touring Europe with an orchestra and doing volunteer work in the Ukraine, she comes back to Kansas with the need to find the answers that have always haunted her. She knows her father was a Native American, a member of the Choctaw tribe in Oklahoma, so she sets out to discover her heritage and, she hopes, learn why her mother gave her up for adoption.
Unable to get a motel room without a credit card, she goes to a campground to spend the night in her car. She meets Jace Reid, a single parent with two children at the campground where his whole family always camps during the Choctaw Labor Day Festival and in the course of interacting with him and his family, she learns about her Native American heritage. She also learns the hard truth of who fathered her and the problems that plagued her mother's life. A hard truth, but one can deal with truth better than with lies and deceptions, no matter how hard the truth may be. Eunice Boeve, author of Ride a Shadowed Trail

This is the fifth (I think) in the "Tending Roses" series. Each book is better than the last. They are all sentimental but I still loved them all and recommend them to anyone wishing to read nice stories about nice people.

I have read the complete series by Lisa Wingate. They are a great escape, with insights and life lessons to be learned.