In Evergreen Tidings From The Baumgartners. whether it’s a church fundraiser, party invitations, or someone else’s marriage, Violet Baumgartner always knows best. She’s successfully masterminding her husband’s retirement party, just as she’s done his entire career and their home lives, when the local celeb she’s asked to make a sparkling, celebratory toast for the Baumgartner family lets out a surprising family secret: Violet will soon be a  grandmother. It’s not exactly a surprise outside the family, since Cerise, the Baumgartners’ daughter, has long been living with Barb, a woman Violet quite likes, but determinedly calls Cerise’s good friend. The very-public news that they’re expecting a child upsets Violet’s cover story.

Violet is determined to save face, because she just loves her perfect family too much to let them be less than perfect. She’s also determined to find out the identity of the child’s father, figure out just how the baby was conceived, and design the cutest nursery ever.  You’ll be completely sucked into the believable Baumgartner(-Hesse) family, while secretly cheering that exasperating Violet isn’t your mother.

The story is well-plotted, with secondary storylines involving church-committee mothers, long-term Minnesota neighbors, and retired husbands who are just home a little too often.  There are some with moments of zaniness, but when the narrative starts to veer into madcap antics (I’m looking at you, train station chicklit novels), solid Midwestern values pull it back.

The end of this novel is amazing. I would have been satisfied with the ending I was expecting, a warm finale about a very different mother and daughter trying to connect with each other, but the sub-plots of the secondary characters are all resolved so well.

Good for fans of the family relationships in The Nest and The Heirs, with a Midwestern kind of style.