Author Description

If you are a denier of destiny, this story will make you think again. In the post-WWII years, Dick and Laurie, living nine blocks apart in Toledo, Ohio, had crossed paths: in nursery school, on bus rides, museum art classes, in sixth-grade dancing school where they might well have danced a fox trot together. Three decades later, they met at an alternative school in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, which their children attended. Twenty-eight years would pass before Dick, a widower and Laurie, a single mother, met again—and this time romance was sparked. "Bashert” (Yiddish for “meant to be”) is the name given to the ancient tortoise who toiled for seventy years in the quest of guiding these souls to their appointment with destiny. At seventy-four, they were married on a bright day in May with the tortoise looking on, and Laurie's brother Don toasting to "Bashert." This is the story of destiny and the full flower of septuagenerian love.