The Baxter Family

    I was hooked.  I couldn't put it down!  Once I finished, I was off to the library to check out the next book.  My husband laughingly calls these books my "drugs."  They left me frantic, overwhelmed, oddly uplifted, and then confused.  Maybe that's my version of a hangover from the addiction!  

     I am referring to books by Christian author Karen Kingsbury, most specifically the Baxter Family books.  They really aren't a series.  They're a hyper-series, full of several smaller series about this famous fictional family.  As of this writing, I believe there are thirty books about the Baxters now.  It's hard to keep up.  

The first 23 books

     These characters were first introduced in the Redemption series, a five-book series Karen Kingsbury wrote with Gary Smalley.  A friend introduced them to me a number of years ago, and as soon as I started book 1, I was hooked.  

     The Baxter family novels (often referred to on the side of the books as Baxter Family Drama) are like a biblical, Christian soap-opera.  

     Whatever issues you have gone through in your life, there is someone in this family you'll relate to.  The Baxters consist of John (a doctor) and his wife Elizabeth (a homemaker) and their adult children.  They appear to be the all-American Christian couple.  You'd never guess all the secrets that lie in their past (in fact, I don't think Karen Kingsbury knew all the secrets in their past when she started writing the books either).  Before I go further, I'm going to explain that I am not going to analyze every book or storyline about the Baxters.  That would be way too long.  I'm just going to cover some basics.  Draw a few conclusions.  There will be spoilers, so if you've not read these books but have a strong intention to do so, I'd recommend not continuing further here.  

     In the original series about them, we meet the Baxters' five children: Brooke, Kari, Ashley, Erin and Luke.  Brooke has become a doctor, like her father, and has even married a doctor.  Kari (around whom the first book revolves) married a young man she met at college.  Ashley (who is initially the black sheep of the family) is an unwed mother in the beginning, but her life and story experience redemption.  Erin is married and is a kindergarten teacher.  She and her husband are unable to have children, and eventually adopt four girls.  Their little nuclear family has the least amount of crazy drama, and they are the ones I related to the most in the series.  Luke is the only son (initially, but I'm getting ahead of myself), and starts off as a very legalistic, self-righteous young man, who eventually has some moral failures and then severe rebellion before coming back to his family and to God, and marrying his sweetheart.

Book 1 in the Redemption Series

     As I said, book one is about Kari and her husband Tim.  Tim (a college professor) is having an affair with a student, and wants a divorce.  Kari must decide to fight for her marriage, and love Tim unconditionally.  In the middle of all of this, she finds out she is pregnant with Tim's child, and this gives her even more resolve to stand firm.  But then a wrench is thrown into this: her high school sweetheart Ryan comes back to town, and Kari has to fight her attraction and feelings for him.  The book dramatizes their past lost love, and their present attraction to each other.  It's pretty intense.  Kari decides to do the godly thing, though.  She lets Ryan go, and fights for her marriage to Tim.  Tim eventually concludes that he wants to be a family again, especially considering their new baby on the way.  He and Kari get some intensive counseling.  There is a lot of good, healthy advice in the book, and I know that came from Gary Smalley's input.  Kari's pregnancy progresses, and their marriage is healing.  However, shortly before their baby girl is born, Tim receives a letter from the girl he was having the affair with, saying she is pregnant by him.  This is a lie--a ploy to win him back.  Tim is devastated.  He has come back to the Lord and to his wife, and wants no part with this affair anymore, but it appears that they now have this connection through the baby she will bear (which, unbeknownst to him, is not even real).  He goes to her apartment to tell her that he will support her, but that he is still staying with his wife, not her.  However, as he goes over there, this girl's former boyfriend (who had been jealous of the affair and had been stalking Tim all this time) was waiting outside, and he shot Tim!  Tim dies from the gunshot wound.  Kari is initially devastated that her husband had gone back to this woman's house, but the woman quickly confesses to Kari that she lied to him and that he was only coming to sort it out.  So at least Kari knows her husband was faithful to her in the end...but wow!  After all that, he dies!  Shortly thereafter, Kari gives birth to her baby girl, and guess who is now able to swoop in?  Ryan.  They rekindle their high school romance and marry a few books later.  Go figure.  While I like the biblical worldview being promoted, and the healthy advice, I think this book was crazy.  Too much!  I was exhausted by the end of book one!  I think it might have been a more powerful message if Tim hadn't died, and Kari had stayed faithful to him, and built a life with him, in spite of nagging feelings for Ryan in the back of her mind.  Denying those desires and filling herself with her commitment to Tim would have given them a wonderful life together, and Ryan would eventually be inconsequential to her.  But of course, they let the unfaithful husband die and Kari gets to be with high school boyfriend. 

     Why are lost love stories so powerful?  Possibly because many of us have had them in our own lives.  Before I married my husband, I had a special place for past boyfriends, and even imagined one special guy coming back into my life and being "the one."  That rarely happens, but it seems to fit well in romantic books.  I think it's an unrealistic portrayal.  In fact, I think it can be dangerous.  Sometimes, people are in our past and not our present for a reason.  God would want us to move forward.  Paul wrote in Philippians 3:13, Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.  Romanticizing the past shouldn't take us away from the present God has us in right now.  I do like how this book had Kari make the right choice to deny her feelings for Ryan and stay faithful to Tim while they worked on their marriage.  That was the right, biblical way to handle it, but it was annoying that Tim dies shortly after and Ryan comes swooping in.  After reading this first book, I was totally hooked, but also felt as if I had expended a lot of emotional energy I could have been using on real people who would actually benefit from it.  

     Also, beyond the romantic emotions, I struggled a little bit with the relationships John and Elizabeth Baxter have with their adult children.  There was so much depth and intensity that I don't always feel in my own relationship with my parents--and I feel we have a healthy, good parent-to-adult-child relationship.  I felt so much unnecessary lack in myself.   

     I also had a hard time that the book kept mentioning how beautiful Kari and Ashley were.  Kari has two men in her life!  And of course, Ryan is the popular football player.  Kari was a high school cheerleader, and, at the time of the story, she is a department store model.  She isn't relatable to average women.  I know that in real life, there are beautiful women who are cheerleaders and models, and are popular, so I guess art must imitate life.  I suppose these books can reveal that even gorgeous, popular girls can still have hurt and rejection.  

     Anyway, book 2 (and many other books in this mega-series) center on Ashley Baxter.  I think Karen Kingsbury must have related to her the most.  Ashley is slightly more relatable to me than Kari.  She is beautiful as well, but to her, it isn't a commodity.  Ashley is an artist, rather than being cool and popular like Kari.  She had a rebellious past, running away to Paris after high school, where she fell into a relationship with a bisexual man who later died of AIDS.  Ashley got pregnant from this relationship, and came home before giving birth to her little boy, Cole.  Her parents initially do a lot of free babysitting for Ashley while she lives an irresponsible life, but she eventually really grows in life and comes to the Lord (it isn't clear if this is her salvation or if it is more of a rededication, but if she wasn't saved before this, she gets saved here).  Unlike Kari, Ashley didn't have a lost love story, but she had an old friend who was in love with her, while she only had platonic feelings for him.  This is Landon Blake.  He is probably my favorite male character in the series.  He is faithful and true, although I don't think he is quite realistic, as he never sins.  He keeps on loving Ashley, even when it was one-sided for many years.  Ashley eventually comes to realize she loves him as well (with a lot of drama, involving 9/11--Landon is a fire fighter and he goes to New York to help during that time), and they finally move forward...except then Ashley has an AIDS scare herself.  She spends the next few books believing she is HIV-positive as a result of her relationship in Paris.  Even in this, Landon loves her, and finally convinces her that they can be married and build a life together.  After all this, she then learns it was a mistaken diagnosis and she is in perfect health after all.  All that drama for nothing!  Again, I felt I expended a lot of emotional energy on fictional characters who didn't end up having the problem in the end!  Ashley's character has the most development and attention.  I like Ashley, and love her relationship with Landon, but I sometimes want to know what everyone else is doing too.  

     Brooke and Luke have their own aspects, but aren't as prominent as Ashley or Kari.  However, Erin has the least amount of storylines involving her.  I wonder if Karen Kingsbury really knew her character very well.  In some books, Erin is described as a brunette, like her sisters, and in others, she is said to be blonde.  To make it easy, I imagine her to look like my blonde sister-in-law, whose name also happens to be Erin.  Only two books (out of thirty!) center on Erin, her husband Sam, and their four adopted daughters (Chloe, Clarisse, Amy-Elizabeth and Heidi Jo)  I think that's very sad.  Erin and Sam are overall the most stable characters.  They move a few times between Indiana (where the rest of the family lives) and Texas (where Sam's job is).  Erin home-schools, and they are deeply involved in their church.  Unlike the other sisters, Erin is a little bit insecure, and didn't have all kinds of men after her.  Sam was her one and only.  She wasn't popular.  She often feels left out from her other three sisters, who are close with each other.  I think she is much easier for the average woman to relate to.  However, I guess Karen Kingsbury didn't see her as being very interesting or important to the plot, because she seldom had Erin's family be a part of what was going on, and (major spoiler alert) in her exciting book Coming Home (the twenty-third book about the Baxters), Erin, Sam, and three of their four daughters are killed in a car accident.  Their remaining daughter is adopted by Ashley and Landon.  It seems like Karen Kingsbury saw Erin as disposable, and since she is the character I most related to, I found that as kind of insulting.  

     Brooke and her husband are both doctors, and initially, they aren't walking with the Lord, but they come to Him throughout the series.  Their younger daughter Haley almost drowns at age 3, but makes an almost complete (unrealistic) recovery.  In the midst of this, Brooke's husband Peter develops a dependency on painkillers, and has to overcome that.  We learn much later that their older daughter Maddie blamed herself for Haley's near-death experience.  Always so much drama.  But everyone miraculously and predictably ends up being okay.  

     I've already explained a little about Luke Baxter.  He was the golden child who never did anything wrong.  But on September 10, 2001, he ends up having sex with his girlfriend Reagan.  They got carried away.  Their moral compromise causes them to miss a casual phone call from Reagan's father, who dies in the twin towers the next day (9/11).  Both Luke and Reagan are riddled with guilt over their moral compromise, and in complete shock over 9/11.  Reagan blames Luke for the fact that she never got to say goodbye to her father (of course, she wouldn't have known it was goodbye), and she goes to be with her mother in New York.  She finds out she is pregnant from her one-time sexual encounter with Luke, but she never tells him.  Anyway, having violated his morals and losing Reagan, Luke becomes bitter, and rebels against God and his family.  His parents are grieved by this.  Ashley ends up running into Reagan in New York (while spending time there with Landon through the course of their relationship), and she tells Luke he has a child.  This changes everything.  He comes back to God and his family.  Luke and Reagan get back together and end up married.  But they have almost nonstop trouble in their relationship.  Luke is probably my least-favorite character.  He goes on to become a lawyer, and that plays into other stories. Luke and Reagan's baby is a boy named Tommy, and Reagan almost dies in childbirth.  She is never able to have more children, and they end up adopting two different children later on, giving them three total.  

     Anyway, in the original Redemption Series, we get this whole crazy dramatic story about all the Baxter's kids (Erin has not yet died during this first series, but otherwise, everything I've shared happens in this series).  But in the final book in the first series, we see crazy drama with John and Elizabeth.  Up until this point, they have been stable for their kids in their struggles.  Now it is their turn for drama.  Elizabeth finds a lump in her breast, which turns out to be cancerous.  In the midst of her battle with cancer, she and John relive some of their past regrets.  It is revealed that they morally compromised as college kids prior to marriage, and Elizabeth had become pregnant.  Her parents had sent her away to have the baby and then made her put it up for adoption.  Their firstborn was a baby boy that they never forgot.  Shortly after this child was born and given up for adoption, John found Elizabeth and they were married and started a life together.  They lived a good life, raising five children they'd had after marriage.  No one knew about their firstborn, not even their kids.  After reading about all the craziness of the previous books, this all seemed so bizarre.  I don't know if Karen Kingsbury was starting off intending to have this as part of the story.  There isn't a lot of foreshadowing about it.  Anyway, in this final book in the first series, we learn that their firstborn son is now a famous movie star, and is looking for his birth family.  His name is Dayne Matthews.  Through a set of unlikely circumstances, Dayne finds the Baxters, and visits with Elizabeth in the hospital just before she dies.  He doesn't stick around long enough to meet the rest of the family.  Elizabeth shares Christ with him, and this sets the stage for the next series.  She is able to tell John she met their firstborn, which he thinks is her delirious ramblings and doesn't take seriously.  It is heartbreaking to see Elizabeth pass away after all these books.  She is the glue in their family.  She did live long enough to see Ashley and Landon's wedding, which also takes place in that book.

     These books are just too drama-packed.  Some books are unrealistic because everyone's life is too perfect.  In these books, they're unrealistic because everyone goes through too many crises.  They can't catch a break!

     The next series is about Dayne Matthew's journey to his birth family and to Christianity.  John eventually learns that Dayne had indeed met Elizabeth before her death after all.  The rest of the kids learn of their parents' secret, and they embrace Dayne into the family.  Dayne has his own dramatic love story with a Christian actress named Katy.  They have all kinds of up and down drama, including Dayne getting in an accident and being in a coma for a while after he and Katy are finally committed to each other.  True Baxter fashion.  Of course, Dayne eventually recovers (what did you expect--he's not expendable like Erin apparently was).  They eventually marry, and have their own crazy drama.

     John eventually finds love again with a woman named Elaine.  She was a very good friend of Elizabeth's, and is a widow herself.  John and Elaine marry.  The kids have a hard time with this at first, but eventually come to accept Elaine as a step-mother.  

     Several of the books also revolve around the Flannigan family, friends of the Baxters, and based on Kingsbury's own family.  There is a lot of drama (and a love triangle) involving the Flannigan's daughter Bailey.  Bailey is the pinnacle of unrelatable beauty, conviction, and talent.  She gets to be in a movie and on Broadway.  She always does right, and is the perfect Christian in every circumstance.  Annoyingly, everyone always agrees and listens to her.  Realistically, she should either have some struggles and failures, or Kingsbury should have her be good and uncompromising, but have her suffer for it.  The beautiful and talented Bailey has two suitors, and ends up marrying the handsome actor.  The other suitor, Cody Coleman, was a major character in the series.  He is a popular football player (big shocker), and ends up marrying another character named Andi who emerges in the series.  Cody and Andi have quite the up-and-down story themselves.  They get engaged and break up twice before getting engaged a third time and finally ending up married.  Again, too much drama!

     The more recent books have been about the younger generation--the children of the Baxter's children as they grow up and fall in love.  I find these harder to relate to, but of course they're well-written, as they all are.  

     In recent years, they have even begun writing a children's series about the Baxters.  These books cover the lives of the family when Elizabeth is still living, and the five known Baxter kids are young.  Like the addicted sucker I am, I had to buy them!  They are very sweet, and touch a part of my heart.  They stay away from the crazy drama, but mostly focus on Ashley and Kari, kind of ignoring the other siblings, which I find disappointing.  

     The positives here are that these books are gripping and compelling, yet come from a biblical worldview.  They show that Christian books can be deep and exciting.  For a long time, Christian fiction was corny, so it's good to see some really high-quality writing.  I love the fact that I can trust Karen Kingsbury's writing to stay in a Christian frame of mind.  As I said earlier, no matter what your issues are in life, someone in these books will have that same issue for you to relate to.  The Baxters really seem like friends at this point.  

     While the content and morals are from the right viewpoint, I sometimes feel emotionally assaulted by these books and their constant, never-ending drama.  They get past one problem and a new one pops up.  There's no rest, no peace.  Anything that can possibly go wrong for these people goes wrong, and yet at the same time, there's the predictable happy ending most of the time.  Sometimes, my own adrenalin carries me through these books (which is why I'm addicted!).  I like the Baxters, and feel like they're my friends (sign of good writing), but I don't really relate to any of them besides Erin (who plays the smallest roll out of the whole family).  Sports play a very big roll in everyone's life and experience, and I've never been interested in sports at all.  I have nothing against sports, but they don't hold my interest.  To each his own.  I relate more to artists, or nerdy brainiac types, and besides Ashley being a painter, these types of people don't really figure much into the plots.  I guess some of the characters act, but they're all big and famous stars.  They say write what you know, so I assume Karen Kingsbury did that.  

     Even though these books are uncompromisingly Christian, I have found that the emotion is stronger than the truths they convey.  I feel like I've been through the trauma these characters experience, yet, since it's not real, I get none of the redemption.  If I'm not in the right frame of mind, I find they're not always healthy for me to read.  Sometimes, I feel these stories are drama for drama's sake.  It's as if she thought, "Hmm...how can I traumatize the Baxters today?  What curve ball can I throw at them this time?"  Enough is enough!

     I think of another famous Christian author, Janette Oke.  In my humble opinion, her books aren't nearly as gripping or addictive as Karen Kingsbury's, but her books possess something Kingsbury's don't.  Oke always has a clear gospel message in her books, so that a non-Christian who might never pick up a Bible would still be able to understand the plan of salvation.  I also think Janette Oke's spiritual messages from each book she writes are more concise and clear.  Karen Kingsbury kind of assaults her readers with emotion, accompanied with the biblical response.  That's still really good, but harder to wade through.  I like how Kingsbury shows the consequences for sin, yet redemption when the characters turn to the Lord.  I definitely don't see her as compromising.  Just not as clear as Janette Oke.  

Julia's Last Hope, my favorite Janette Oke book.  I've probably read it thirty times!

     Karen Kingsbury's story of how she came up with these characters is inspiring.  As the story goes, the Lord brought them to her while she was flying across the country.  She started jotting the stories down as they came to her, and by the end of the flight, she had written about 40 pages about the Baxters, and she was crying about all the things they would have to go through.  At this time, she knew them.  They lived inside of her.  I can relate to that in a sense.  I feel that way about my characters from my Riverside County Chronicles.  As a writer, I understand that sometimes, you have to allow your characters to go through things.  I cried when, in the book A Year in the Life, (book six in my series), the Cooper family had to move away, right as Rachel and Petey come of age and realize they're in love...but I didn't unleash every tragedy known to man on my characters (and I did bring Petey and Rachel back together very romantically and humorously in the next book)!  To hear Karen Kingsbury she acts as if she had no control over her characters' experiences!  If the Lord really did give her these exact stories, I can't argue with it, but, well, as I said, enough is enough!  

     Conclusion, these books are an excellent read.  They will hold your interest, and won't morally compromise.  They are real-to-life in that they cover real-life struggles people really face, but they are not real-to-life in the sense that most of the characters are very popular, successful and beautiful, and also that NO ONE I have ever met goes through every conceivable problem like they do!  There is probably some character you will relate to in these books.  If you are up for it, these are great books. If you aren't wanting that much emotional stimulation, these might not be the thing for you.  It's good to know what's out there.  What do you think about these books, and about Karen Kingsbury's books in general?