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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals by Wendy Jones

This is a great book about the consequences of impulsive decisions.  The time is post-WWI in Wales.  Wilfred is the local undertaker and he has a small but thriving business.  He is an eligible bachelor.  He is carried away one day at a picnic and impulsively asks a woman, Grace, whom he barely knows to marry him.  The next day he has serious buyer's remorse but he is not quite sure how to reverse the situation.  Grace has already told her parents, who have in turn alerted the whole town.

Wilfred tells Grace, but she is in her own fix--she is pregnant.  The proposal from Wilfred couldn't have come at a better time for her, and his backing out leaves her in a serious fix.  So instead of facing up to the situation, she keeps quiet, and Wilfred has to alert her parents and the rest of the town to the fact that their situations have changed.  While all this shuffling is going on, Wilfred has fallen for the lovely Flora, who sees herself as unable to love since her intended failed to come back from the war.  When Grace tells her father that she is with child but fails to disclose who the father is, he forces Wilfred to marry her.  All seems lost for our hero, but eventually Grace realizes what she has to do and she rights several wrongs--but not all of them. 

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