Product Description

Elise didn’t want to be in the town at all–and certainly not in the scrapbooking shop…

A month after Elise Shelton and her family arrive in Forest Falls, Oregon, she wanders into Rebekah Graham’s scrapbooking store. Elise deems Rebekah too perky and judges scrapbooking to be another never-gets-done chore, but she’s also drawn to the community of women who gather to crop their photos, lay out pages, and share their lives.

The women rally around Elise when her husband is called back into the army and her family is thrown into turmoil. When Rebekah’s daughter faces a medical crisis, challenging Rebekah’s desire to control her life as tightly as she plans her scrapbook pages, the women must support each other.

As both women battle to overcome their fears and to grow in faith, they discover unexpected gifts–and an unlikely friendship that will change their lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #767845 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-10
• Released on: 2006-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Leslie Gould lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, Peter, and four children. Her previous novels include Garden of Dreams and Beyond the Blue. Leslie enjoys watching her daughters and friends scrapbook, and she sometimes joins them.

Customer Reviews

Scrapbooking woven into the lives to two women facing major changes
"'It feels like everyone else is living their perfectly normal lives while we're in survival mode, for who knows how long.' Rebekah hesitated. `Patrick said...that he felt God had forgotten us.'
...
"`It's hard for me to leave this up to God. I wanted my plan to be his plan.' Rebekah paused. The truth was that she no longer had a plan, no layout in mind, no outfits to match the specially chosen designer paper, no arrangements to create a perfect album."

How often have you felt something like this - like everyone else's lives are "normal", and you can barely keep your head above water? Like if everyone just paid attention and listened to you, everything would work out fine. And how often does that happen? Yeah, I have no idea what "normal" looks like, either, and I have a hard time letting things just "happen".

These statements sum up one of the central themes of Leslie Gould's new novel, Scrap Everything. Much of the storyline deals with change, and how different people view it and cope with it. It's a story of faith, of learning to let go of what you cannot control, and learning to accept help from others.

Scrap Everything is the story of two very different women, and their families - how they become involved in each other's lives, and how they struggle to give and accept help in times of need.

Elise Shelton is an army wife with two teenage sons. With her husband's retirement from active, she and her family move to her husband's hometown, a small town in Oregon. She is not excited by the idea of living in "the best little town in the world", and is relieved by the knowledge that it's only temporary. She has no intention of settling into life in the small town, and no intention of getting involved.

"Involved" could be Rebekah Graham's middle name. She throws herself whole-heartedly into every project, whether it's scrapbooking, meeting new people, or her home life. We see evidence of her obsessive nature in her thoughts of getting a part-time job or maybe opening a business. A month later, she has opened a scrapbooking store.

It's at the scrapbooking store that the two characters meet. At the suggestion of her husband, Elise grudgingly attends the introductory workshop at the store. Elise immediately nicknames her "Miss Perky", mentally describing her as speaking "in italics and exclamation points..." Rebekah welcomes her into the store, and soon impulsively invites Elise to come horseback riding, even though she thinks Elise seems "awfully pretentious". She mentally compares Elise to the "popular girls" in middle school. On this note, they begin their relationship.

Life doesn't go smoothly for either of these main characters. Both Elise and Rebekah endure challenging situations through the course of the book. Both need support and help to get through them. Both struggle to accept help - they both suffer from the "I-should-be-able-to-handle-it-myself" syndrome. (Can you relate?) While the book follows their day-to-day journey through the challenges, it also highlights their thought processes in learning to accept the changes, and the support necessary to attend to all their duties. They come to learn more about each other and themselves as they grow to accept these challenges. They learn that leaps of faith are easier when you accept that friends and family will be there to catch you.

I'll be honest -- when I first started reading this book, I didn't particularly like it. Elise seemed so judgmental and negative that she was hard to "be around", so to speak. Rebekah seemed like an overly extreme case of an over-achieving multi-tasker - but it's more likely that I related too much to the character, and didn't like what I saw. I was also uncomfortable with the short scenes that seemed to begin and end abruptly.

But as I read more, I grew to like the characters, thinking about them when I wasn't reading the book. As I got closer to the end, it was harder to put down. I became engrossed in their personal growth, and how they came to have faith and trust that things would work out.

Something else I liked about this book was the role scrapbooking played in the characters' lives. I liked that the whole book didn't focus on scrapbooking, but rather showed how scrapbooking was woven into their lives. I liked how the regular group of croppers rallied around both Elise and Rebekah when they needed support, offering domestic help, as well as help with scrapbooking projects. That was real to me, having experienced the same support from my own scrapbooking friends. It shows that scrapbooking isn't just about the actual hobby - more often it's the gathering of like-minded people, sharing their lives, both the positive and the challenging. Which made scrapbooking, and a scrapbooking store, the perfect background for this story.

I would recommend Scrap Everything for those who are interested in scrapbooking, stories of women's friendships, and faith journeys. It's a strong story which may give you more than you were expecting.

I missed my bus stop


Leslie has done something that not many authors have done of late and that is keep my interest. I missed my bus stop this morning because I was so engrossed in the book and then I didn't want to put it down when my lunch hour was over. I walked home from the bus stop reading it so that I could finish it.

Elise, Ted and their two teenage sons move to the small town of Forest Falls just before Ted is called back to the Army. There Elise meets Rebekah and the two form a friendship slowly and hesitantly, and support each other through crisis's large and small. Rebekah runs a scrapbook shop and deals with her daughter needing a kidney transplant, while Elise is running from her memories of the small town in which she grew up and having to deal with two teenage boys while her husband is in Germany and Iraq.

Leslie has captured much of the angst and anger that teenage boys feel while their father is away, speaking from experience, my own Dad was in the Navy while I was growing up. The feelings are real and so is the behavior of the boys. RRRR

inspirational family drama
With Dr. Ted Shelton leaving the military, his wife Elise and their two sons Michael and Mark know that their nomadic lifestyle is over. The family is moving from Fort Carson, Colorado to spend some time with his father John in his hometown of Forest Falls, Oregon before moving on to Seattle at least that is Elise's thoughts; Ted thinks his hometown is the best place in the world and no one will want to leave it.

In Forest falls, Elise meets scrapbook store owner Rebekiah Graham, her spouse Patrick and their two children Reid and Pepper. They become friends though the newcomer thinks a scrapbook store is so inane. Not long afterward, Ted is recalled to duty by the Third Medical Command in Fort Gillem, Georgia, which means a tour of the war zone. As she struggles to cope, her oldest son begins to get into trouble. Meanwhile Pepper, the twelve year old who has a history of kidney trouble now needs a transplant. The townsfolk rally around both families who both pray to God for miracles.

Though too much is going on in the lives of the two women, readers will appreciate this inspirational family drama due to a strong cast. Elise and Rebekiah, though two diverse personalities, are fine caring people who forge a sisterhood to help them cope with the dark days ahead. Though Elise's sense of guilt re her spouse and her sons seems unrealistic and unnecessary, she and her friend find inspiration in the support of the locals and with the Lord as both begins to believe in God's message of hope. On top of all this is a reference to the best kept secret in the army: Fort Gillem.

Harriet Klausner