In a recent appearance in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, syndicated columnist
and novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard maintained that her newest book,
TWELVE TIMES BLESSED, is one that men need not be afraid of. The
comment got a laugh from the large, almost entirely female
audience. After all, TWELVE TIMES BLESSED has all the ingredients
of a standard "woman's book." A successful woman, True Dickinson,
flirts with an attractive man on her birthday, only to be rescued
from death by exposure by the same hunky fellow after her car
swerves off the road on her way home. A disastrous date later, True
discovers that this is true love and the proverbial bodice-ripping
begins. There is love, there is fighting, there is separation,
there is tentative but hopeful reconciliation. It is, of course, a
familiar formula.

But acknowledging that a book is formulaic is not the same as
criticizing the book. After all, as readers of genre fiction know,
it's not whether you use the formula, but how you use the formula
that counts. And Mitchard's gifts for characterization, humor and
pacing elevate TWELVE TIMES BLESSED out of the murky waters of most
formula fiction.

While True and her beloved, a younger and somewhat wilder man named
Hank, are both well drawn, Mitchard does much of her best character
work with less central figures, including True's mother, a woman
who expresses her displeasure with her daughter's romantic choices
in myriad awful ways. True's son, Guy, is also compelling, as
Mitchard does a fine job capturing the rapidly shifting emotions
and behavior of a 10-year-old boy caught between childhood and
adolescence. Guy's struggles are often poignant, but his antics
also provide much of the book's gentle humor.

Though the book is fairly lengthy, checking in at over 500 pages,
Mitchard moves her story along (sometimes even a bit too quickly)
as True and Hank encounter a variety of challenges, ranging from
the trivial to the tragic. The occasional clunky sentence
(sometimes involving confusion over the use of the word/name "True"
at the beginning of a sentence) slows things down a bit from time
to time but, on the whole, Mitchard tells a well-paced story and
deftly assures that the reader will root for her two lovers from
beginning to end.

Mitchard was right to tell her audience that men need not be afraid
of TWELVE TIMES BLESSED. Though told from True's perspective
throughout, the book's portrayal of Hank is well done. He is
neither wholly a knight-in-shining-armor, nor wholly a rouge. As a
result, he is both believable and likeable, as is the novel as a
whole.