The first blurb I saw for Her Mother’s Hope by Francine Rivers mentioned mother-daughter conflict, and that in itself didn’t sound like something I would want to read, but Francine writes riveting stories, and I knew there would be much more depth. And indeed, there was.

Marta Schneider is born to an abusive father and a God-fearing mother in Switzerland in the late 1800s. As she grows older, her father takes her out of school at a young age and sends her out to work at various service-related jobs. When she foresees that her life will never change, with her mother’s encouragement, she leaves.

Marta tackles anything that comes into her path with resolve and hard work. She travels various places and learns different skills and languages with a desire to open her own boarding house some day. When she finally realizes her dream, she unexpectedly falls in love with one of her boarders and marries.

When Marta’s daughter, Hildemara, is born early, small, and frail, Marta is determined that she will never end up as her younger sister, Elise, did, who was a fragile soul, beautiful and overprotected, who came to a tragic end. Marta’s efforts to make her daughter tough and strong are often misunderstood. Hildemara feels as if she can never obtain her mother’s approval, so when she can she goes off on her own quest.

You just ache for these two and their misunderstood actions toward each other.

I also enjoyed Marta’s relationship with her quieter husband, the fact that though she drives him crazy sometimes, he loves her and her “fire.” They spar often over — well, over many things, but most often over the need to rest and wait on the Lord versus the need to take matters into their own hands and do something.

The historical backdrop covers two world wars, the plight of immigrants to this country, especially when their old and new countries are at war, and the hard life of a sharecropper.

Francine shares that though the story is fictional, it contains many facts from her own family’s history.

It’s not a short read at 483 pages, but it goes quickly. I enjoyed spending an entire evening with this book, which is rare for me — I usually read in bits.

I don’t feel as if I am doing the book justice, so let me just say I recommend it. I have readers who would want to know these things, so I will just mention that there are a couple of instances of intimacy between Marta and her husband that were more explicit than I wanted to read, but they are very brief.

I am glad I waited to read the book until this time, because the sequel, Her Daughter’s Dream, is due out today — so I don’t have to wait long to find out what happens next!

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

The Pirate Queen by Patricia Hickman is not the swashbuckling, high-seas adventure you might have been expecting from the title. Rather, it is the story of Saphora Warren, a wealthy socialite who appears to have an ideal life, but whose husband is an inattentive, unreasonable philanderer. On the very day that Saphora packs up her bags, planning to quietly leave her husband, he comes home and announces that he is dying. Furthermore, he wants to go to their coastal home — the very place Saphora had planned to retreat to — to seek treatment, and he wants Saphora to go with him. Subduing her own plans and feelings, Saphora goes with him. Various members of their dysfunctional extended family come to visit over the summer, further wreaking havoc with Saphora’s life, but she strikes up a surprising but beneficial friendship with a quiet, older-than-his-years neighbor boy.

I can’t remember now where I first saw the book recommended, but I picked it up to see what the author did with Saphora and her husband Bender’s story. I can’t really say without giving away the plot, but perhaps more important than the plot are their character studies.

My biggest complaint is one I have mentioned before. I don’t believe every Christian fiction novel needs to have a three point outline of the plan of salvation complete with the “sinner’s prayer,” but whatever it does contain of the gospel needs to be clear and accurate. The advice given to Saphora is kind of nebulous: “Keep looking for answers,” “Jesus invites you to join him on his journey,” “Your life is going to be difficult….but with a little help, you’ll learn to love.” If I were in Saphora’s situation, I would want  counsel much more concrete than that.

There were a couple of phrases that struck me as quite nicely written. “The afternoon had been spilled like sweet tea poured out.” And on the subject of not being able to come up with the right thing to say until too late (which I tend to experience!), “Thinking deeply rather than broadly presented so many lost opportunities.”

This is actually a strange little book to me. I don’t mean that negatively, but much of the family’s conversations and interactions were not what I would expect from my own family. Which is fine — different people have different personalities and frames of reference. But though I could enter into Saphora’s angst in dealing with all the unexpected things life throws at her, I couldn’t really fully identify with the characters. The title didn’t really make sense to me until the end, and even then it didn’t seem to fit exactly, considering what a pirate is and how he gets what he wants compared to Saphora’s situation. But maybe I am just missing something.

(Updated to add: The author discusses how she came to write this novel here, and that did help shed light on the pirate allusion.)

If you’ve read this, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I did enjoy the book, however, and the journey Saphora and Bender take.