A Spoiler
If you haven't read Shepherds Abiding and you plan to read it sometime, don't read this entry. I'm going to give away an important part of the story that you don't find out until the very end.
The broken angel is restored completely. It was such a nice ending for the really nice story.
It might be hard for me to believe that the angel was mended so completely except for the fact that I had something that was smashed and was mended completely. For many years my mom had a little brown well, a McCoy ceramic, as a centerpiece on the kitchen table. She often had a bit of ivy or a rooting sprig of plant in the well. When she started using another centerpiece, she gave me the little well.
I took the well to school with me and had it on my desk and kept pencils in it. One day a couple of boys got careless with their rowdiness and bumped my well off the desk and it smashed to bits. It was obvious that I felt bad about it. I was sure that it was gone for good.
Heidi told me, "Let me take it to my grandma. She mends broken things. She'll mend it for you." I wanted to just throw it away. It was really smashed. But Heidi insisted and we gathered up all the bits and pieces and Heidi took them home. Even so, I was sure that was the last of it. But several months later, Heidi brought the well back. It looked as if Grandma had found a replacement well and bought it for me, but close examination showed the fine lines where it had been a 3-D jig saw puzzle and was now glued together. So I can believe that it was a realistic ending to have the broken angel restored.
Oddly enough, my last book, Lavender Green Magic by Andre Norton, also told of a badly broken figurine which was patiently glued together again. It's interesting how sometimes an incident becomes a theme for your life for a few days. Mending broken things seems like a good theme to pay attention to.
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