What Love Sees

Can a blind couple raise four children on a ranch? Author Susan Vreelend met such a family in 1983 and felt compelled to share their lives.

What Love Sees is her first novel, published in 1988. Jean Treadway, a young, cultured New England woman whose every material need is supplied by wealthy, overprotective parents “meets” through arranged correspondence Forrest Holly, a dirt-poor Southern California rancher whose spiritual foundation turns despair into purpose.

As different as they are in background, they share two things: their blindness and their determination to live an active, normal life and raise a family.

While Jean was among the first women to use a Seeing Eye dog on urban streets in the late 1930s, Forrest used a seeing eye bull and his horses to guide him on the ranch in the 1940s.

As they discover each other through letters that have to be read to them, his earnestness and folksy humor win her heart.

Their four children, each with a distinct individuality, provide challenges, frustrations, and occasions for tenderness. Through tears and laughter, tragedy and triumph, they all learn Forrest’s doctrine that “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”