Welcome to Novel PASTimes! We are pleased you stopped by today.

Thank you. I’m honored that you thought to invite me.

Tell us something about where you live.

I live in the home my husband Norman and I purchased shortly after he returned home from the war in his hometown of LaFontaine, Michigan. It’s a nice place to live. Not too big, not too small. It’s just right. 

If ever I need something that only a city could provide, I’m just a forty-five minute drive to Lansing in one direction and Detroit in the other.

Is there anything special about your name? Why do you think you were given that name?

I’m not sure that there really is anything special about the name Betty. I’m not an Elizabeth or a Bethany. Just plain old Betty. All my life, though, I’d longed for something a little more elegant or sophisticated. But no such luck. 

At least when I married Norman I gained the last name Sweet, which I like very much. 

Do you have an occupation? What do you like or dislike about your work?

Well, I’ve mostly just been a little housewife since I married Norm. Between you and me, I’m not especially good at it. That’s not to say that I keep a messy home. But I’d rather spend my time reading or writing or even sitting outside in the yard, enjoying the sunshine on my face. 

Who are the special people in your life?

Oh, I am such a fortunate woman to have a family who loves me. Of course, it’s a family I married into, but as far as I’m concerned it still counts. I don’t know that I’d have anything close to this kind of joy without my darling Norman. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved and he has given me more in this life than I could have ever dreamed. 

What is your heart’s deepest desire?

The deep desires of my heart have changed as I’ve grown older. I suppose that’s normal. When I was a young girl I wanted nothing more than the love of my parents. Then, as I teetered on the ledge between childhood and womanhood, I longed for the love of a husband. After I got married, I wanted so badly to have the love a child all my own. 

It seems that my deepest desire — to be loved — has also grown in me a yearning to love others deeply. 

What are you most afraid of?

Oh goodness. This is the kind of question that makes me feel a bit antsy. There are so many things in this life to fear. Aren’t there? 

I suppose that my greatest fear is that something bad will happen to someone I love dearly. Even more than that, I fear that I wouldn’t be able to do anything for them. It’s the helplessness that frightens me.

Do you have a cherished possession?

Would you think me terribly superficial if I said that my pink and gunmetal gray Chevy Bel Air is my favorite possession? It’s pretty and shiny and I feel so sophisticated when I drive it around town. Does it help if I tell you that it was a gift from my Norman?

What do you expect the future will hold for you?

Isn’t it fun to daydream? That’s when I let myself wonder about what might happen in the future. Sometimes I imagine that the little stories I tell my nephews will end up in a book. Other days I picture myself working more and more at the family bakery. Still other times I dream of growing old in the house Norm and I have always loved, watching the sunset from my porch. 

I don’t have big dreams. Not really. I guess that’s because the life I have is as much — if not better — than what I’d imagined as a child.

What have you learned about yourself in the course of your story?

I never considered myself a particularly strong person. That was always the part my sister Clara played. She was the determined one, the fighter. Clara the Conqueror, I like to call her.

But there are times when even a weak person is called on to show great strength. And in those moments, she does well to remember that her might isn’t her own. It comes from the Lord who is glad to have our burdens cast upon him. 

If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that I am strong, but only through the power of my Father in heaven.

Thanks for allowing us to get know you a little better!

How very kind of you to have me! 

Betty Sweet is a pleasantly plump forty-year-old, but when this 1960s suburban woman loses her husband unexpectantly, she struggles to find her purpose in life. She can’t imagine what God has in mind when she finds herself the soul caretaker of a five-year-old nephew she never knew she had. 

Betty and her nephew make an odd pair. But more powerful than what makes them different is what they share: the heartache of an empty space in their lives. As Betty and Hugo struggle through their grief and the difficulties that life can bring, they slowly learn to trust one another as they discover hope and commonality through the magic of storytelling. 

Susie Finkbeiner is the CBA bestselling author of All Manner of Things, as well as A Cup of Dust, A Trail of Crumbs, and A Song of Home. She serves on the Fiction Readers Summit planning committee, volunteers her time at Ada Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and speaks at retreats and women’s events across the country. Susie and her husband have three children and live in West Michigan.