once again: Luke without Jennet SPOILERS
The most common question I get about The Endless Forest has to do with Jennet's death and the aftermath. After Jennet died, Luke returned to Manhattan alone, leaving the children behind to be raised in Paradise. Many readers have trouble with this.
It was very common until not-so-long ago that families traded children around after the death of a parent or because of some other family disaster. Exactly why Luke chose to leave the children in Paradise is a question with dozens of possible answers, for example:
Jennet told him she wanted her children raised in Paradise, or
Luke's business concerns were failing, and he didn't know if he'd have the finances to provide the staff and resources the children would need, or
Luke fell into a depression so deep he was barely able to take care of himself, or
One or more of the children developed complications after the infection that killed Jennet, and needed the kind of medical care they could only get in Paraidse,
I'm sure I could come up with a couple dozen reasonable scenarios, but my job is done. I have to sit back and let the readers decide what happened and why it happened. An author who tries to explain a character's actions after the fact comes across as somebody unsure of the story. I am very sure of my story.
So if you want to bat around some ideas on Luke's decision, please feel free to do it here. But I can't give you an ultimate answer, because there isn't one.
s'okay?
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I just finished the series as well (Hildy, thanks for the link to this page), and I was also wondering about Luke. Some of these reasons had already occured to me, and I knew that there had to be a good explanation because Luke is not the kind of man to abandon his family (he would have Jennet haunting him in Scots for the rest of his life!) There was a part later in the epilogue about how three of the older boys went to live with Luke in Manhattan to pursue their studies, and I thought that this clearly implied that he had never turned his back on them.Thank you for this wonderful series! Because of Hildy, there are several of us recently who have picked up this series for the first time. We have all enjoyed it very much - thank you for The Bonners! :-)
Finished this amazing series yesterday and cannot get that epilogue out of my mind - the story ended happily with Lily safely giving birth and then BAM!!! Jennet - dead, Simon - dead etc etc. I loved the series and the Bonners I have gone into mourning for the end of the series - I am going to read the Epilogue again and understand that many years passed between these tragedies.Are you going to write another epic novel - I hope so because I love your style of writing - I look forward to reading more of your books.
I loved the whole series and have recommended it to many friends. I'm sitting here a little sad that it's all over.
Thank you so much for giving me this wonderful story about The Bonners.