The Hickory Reading Club meeting of February thirteenth allowed hostesses Lynn Brand and Janice Morgan to showcase Valentine's themed decor and a chicken spaghetti and sides buffet meal in the Hickory Baptist Church fellowship hall.
Billie Ruth Brand's devotion emphasized seeking inner peace and used the comparison that a sleeper carrying a worry or care to bed is like sleeping with a pack on the sleeper's back. Poem excerpts and other shared thoughts reinforced that such worry is useless and needless because of Jesus's providential care.
Mary Ann Bond chose to analyze Karen Kingsbury's inspirational novel Someone Like You (2020) as the program for the meeting. (SPOILER ALERT!) The book, part of Kingsbury's Baxter Family Series and now the basis for a motion picture (2024), deals with medical and moral issues of IVF (in vitro fertilization); the trauma, confusion, and anger of adult Andi Allen learning of her own adoption as an embryo; and the accidental death of Dawson Gage's love London Quinn, triggering new beginnings for both Andi and Gage. (HRC challenge for readers: Read the book. See the movie. Analyze the differences!)
