The Hidden Flame by Janette Oke and Davis Bunn is the second in the Acts of Faith series set during the time of the early church in Acts. The first book, The Centurion’s Wife (reviewed here) took place just after the death and resurrection of Christ. The Hidden Flame picks up right where the action left off in the earlier book, but then there is a two-year gap before we see the early disciples in their new patterns of life.

The main character of this book is Abigail, a friend of Leah’s from the previous book. Abigail thought she had lost her entire family, but discovered her brother alive at the end of the first book. Now they have become integrated with the disciples, and despite Abigail’s previous injuries from a cauldron of boiling water spilling onto her, she is an active member, busy ministering in the kitchens and in distributing food to the poor. Two men are after her hand: one an older, wealthy Jewish merchant, the other a young Roman soldier. The problem, though, is that neither of them are believers, which is something she strongly desires in a mate, but women in that day had little say about whom they were given to in marriage.

I mentioned in my review of the first book that I approach Biblical fiction somewhat warily as too often the author’s imagination can take off and obscure or even supersede the facts. But David Bunn and Janette Oke are as careful as I think they can be. The reader has to understand  that the characters who are developed a little more than the Bible gives us information about are products of the author’s imagination and therefore not entirely Biblical, but I think the authors do a good job of fleshing out what they think the Biblical characters might have been like.

The main events from the book of Acts here are the way the church dealt with the persecuted or displaced early believers, the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, the naming of the first deacons, and the stoning of Stephen. I especially appreciated the way the situation with Ananias and Sapphira was handled. We tend to breeze right through that passage on the way to the next, but this caused me to think for the first time how the incident must have impacted  both the community and the believers, who I imagine would have been very shaken. As the different believers in the story wrestle with what has happened and discuss it with each other, we hear varying views of possible reasons the Lord handled the situation in just that way without a one dogmatic, overriding view.

I am assuming there will be more books in the series: there were no loose ends at the conclusion, but there was a feel that there was more of the story to come. I look forward to it.

(This review will be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Where My Heart Belongs by Tracie Peterson is a prodigal daughter story. Amy changed her name at the age of eighteen, demanded her inheritance from her father, and left home without another word for twelve years. Suddenly she shows back up on the old homestead doorstep wanting to renew family ties. Her older sister, Kathy, is understandably wary at first and wrestles with her own feelings of anger and betrayal.

Tracie does a good job with what could have been, but is not, a clichéd story (not that the Biblical prodigal story itself is clichéd — it is a marvelous parable of redemption.) I found myself empathizing with both characters as they worked through their various issues and alternately took steps toward and then away from understanding and forgiving each other. There were layers to each that I would not have originally anticipated.

My only quibbles were that the latter part of the book seemed a little rushed, and it ended maybe a little too perfectly, but on the other hand, every now and then it is nice to have things end in the ideal way we all really wish would happen, and after all the anguish both characters suffer, it is good to see things turn around for them.