Ellie Marrandette: Restoring Hope

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Through golf the student learns discipline, integrity, patience and the joy of accomplishing a difficult task.

Restoring Hope takes off where Ellie Marrandette’s last novel, Casey’s Journey ended. Casey at the age of five was abducted and adopted.

Adoption is a complex issue. There is the adopted child to consider as well as the adoptive parents and the real parents. The search for one’s child or mother and the fear this brings to the adoptive parents is all part of the dynamics of adoption which the author addresses in this novel.  

In Restoring Hope, Casey – one of the central characters of the novel – is searching for the child she gave up for adoption while in the process of setting up a non-profit Golf Academy for underprivileged young girls.

Golf, as Casey explains, is a rich man’s sport and so her motivation in setting up the Restoring Hope Golf Academy is to offer golf scholarships to girls coming from unhealthy environments: gangs, poverty, racial inequality and abuse among other disadvantages. The Academy’s goal is to teach these at risk young women life skills through golf and provide them with opportunities to succeed.

Hope, one of the students in the Academy,  does not fit the mold of being brought up in poverty or gangs. Yet, she is a disturbed child filled with the sense of not belonging, guilt for her adoptive mother’s death, and fear of being abandoned by her father.

Level-headed pro golfer, Casey, is not naïve to believe that all her students will end up playing on golf tours but she is wise enough to know that some of her students will exhibit business skills and that golf will help them in the competitive world of men doing business on the golf course. 

Even if you don’t play golf or, for some reason or another, don’t like the game, Restoring Hope will make you gain appreciation and respect for it. As a Christian faith oriented novel, the game of golf is used as a means to provide positive guidance through an ethical and moral compass. Plus, if you are a golf fan, as I am, I picked up some interesting golf tips.

In 2011 I worked as a volunteer at the Women’s Canadian Open outside of Montreal. Reading this novel brought back memories of that week which I spent watching some of the best women golfers in the world, how they focused on their game and the smooth, confident intensity of their shots. In reading the scenes in Restoring Hope of preparing for and taking part in a golf tournament, I was brought back to these behind the scenes of pro-golf from the resources it takes to put a tour together, to the practice before the tour and the joys of accomplishment which follow.

Restoring Hope is also full of romance with its twists and turns, which adds an endearing and suspenseful touch to the novel.

In the end, this is a novel about integrity, love and purpose.

It’s a hopeful novel.

Which is something the world needs these days.

20 thoughts on “Ellie Marrandette: Restoring Hope”

  2. I like it when books acknowledge the complexity of adoption. As an adoptive mother myself, I understand those complexities. It’s interesting how people distinguish between ‘adoptive’ parents and ‘real’ parents. The fact is, most adoptive parents see themselves as real parents. The dynamics of the relationship can get complicated, and it sounds as though that’s explored here. I think it can get even more complicated when the birth mother wants to connect with the adopted child (that didn’t happen in our case, so I can’t speak from experience). That underlying tension, plus the idea of golf as a therapy tool, sounds as though it makes for a really interesting read.

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  8. Carol, a wonderful review and this alone gives me hope! 😀 A most unusual sport to use as a metaphor in a book and I’m intrigued by the concept and totally hooked by the story and characters. A book I want to look at closer. As for the game, it is to my shame I never joined the St. Andrews university golf club whilst I was there as a student… after all as I understand it is the birth place of golf!

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    • Oh, Annika, what a shame that you didn’t join the St. Andrews university golf club. So many golfers would be envious of this opportunity! But there is a lot more to life and excitement and a lot less frustrating than golf.
      Ellie’s latest book is aptly titled. A very enjoyable novel.

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