Tag Archives: Books

Review: All the Lost Places

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All the Lost Places

In All the Lost Places by Amanda Dykes, Daniel Goodman is a former thief in 1904 California who is trying to make restitution. He saves money from his lowly wages to repay those he robbed from. He has not seen his mother since he got out of prison: he feels he can’t face her until he has righted his wrongs.

When he hears that his mother may lose her home due to lack of finances, he looks for additional work. A seemingly chance encounter finds him interviewing with a man whose boss wants to make a “little Venice” in CA. At first Daniel applies just for physical labor. But upon finding out that someone is needed to translate one of Daniel’s favorite books and travel to Venice to sketch famous buildings, Daniel pushes hard for that role. His mother had come from Venice. She had sent him the book in question when he was in prison. He used to be able to draw–a head injury has left him unable to draw from memory any more, but he can draw something if he can see it.

The man is skeptical at first, but when Daniel draws a nearby building for him, the man agrees.

Daniel had kept himself pretty isolated after his prison confinement, so traveling and interacting with so many people is a strain on his nerves. He barely arrives in Venice when he literally runs into Vittoria, a bookseller. One of his tasks is to try to find the original copy of the book he’s supposed to translate, The Book of Waters. Daniel’s copy is one of only a few, which are all unfinished. It’s hoped that the original will have the closing chapters. He enlists Vittoria’s help to try to find the book.

As Daniel translates, he’s drawn into the story of Sebastien, who was put in a basket and floated toward an orphanage in Venice in 1807. Instead, a gondolier notices the basket, picks him up, and takes him to a guild of five artisans, who adopt him and train him in each of their skills. Though Sebastien loves his blended family, he wrestles all his life with his identity and purpose. One day, a woman washes up on the shore of the island Sebastien lives on, changing both their lives forever.

Sebastien’s story occurs when Napoleon had taken over Venice. Some Venetians planned that at some point, they would revolt and set up their Doge, or governor.

Sebastien and Daniel wrestle with some of the same questions. Though Daniel knows his origins, he can’t free himself from the guilt and losses of his past. Yet just as Venice was “the city that came from a swamp . . . a lost place that grew hope,” perhaps God can build something new and beautiful on the swampy places of a man’s life.

The Napoleonic era is one I know very little about, and I was glad to learn more of that time frame and Venice’s history. Amanda shares a lot of interesting details in in her end notes, including the fact that an Abbot Kinney really did build a “Venice of America” in CA in the early 1900s.

Some of the quotes that stood out to me:

Isn’t that the way of miracles? Something extraordinary because of the faithful ordinary (p. 53, Kindle version).

Found means someone was searching for you, running after you. You, the greatest treasure in all the world. That is what Trovato—Found—means. Sebastien Trovato, you are Found. Always and forever (p. 74).

Life had taught them hope was a dangerous and fragile thing . . . Faith sang a different song: hope was as necessary as breath, and so strong that it carried its own heartbeat (p. 115).

He dug instead for the tiniest slip of hope. And in doing so, hope became . . . purpose (p. 120).

Mosaic . . . it is the art of empty spaces. Broken things, harvested as treasure and pieced together into something entirely . . . different. Old, but new. Broken, but whole (p. 219).

“Do not be downcast, O your soul!’” He raised his face to the sun, reciting a psalm—or what sounded like one.
“Do you mean ‘O my soul’?”
“My soul is very happy in this moment. I mean your soul” (p. 249). 

Perhaps you are becoming a new tool for a new work. God is not bound by the way things used to be (p. 254).

She stood before him, inches and a universe away, all at once (p. 285).

Amanda’s writings always touch the heart. This book took a little longer for me to get into than some of her others, but I loved how all the threads came together in the end.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Review: Daniel for You

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Daniel for You

The Biblical Daniel was a young man, probably a teenager, when he and others were taken captive and exiled to Babylon. He ended up spending his entire life in exile. The first six chapters of the book of Daniel show him and his friends living for God in an atmosphere that’s foreign to them and their beliefs. The last six chapters share visions and messages given to Daniel that reach far into the future, even to end times.

In Daniel for You, David Helm posits that, though God gave His people into the Babylonians’ hands as punishment for their disobedience and idolatry, He had additional purposes in mind.

This book shows that God intends to do more than merely judge an ungodly nation. Instead, he offers a saving word to those under his wrath—his deserved, settled anger. And for that, he will need his people dwelling there. They will need to be at home in Babylon, revealing God’s king and kingdom in ways that ultimately find their fulfillment in Christ (pp. 8-9).

Daniel and three of his friends were among those chosen to be educated, assimilated into Babylonian culture, and taken into the king’s service. They were given Babylonian names. One of their first challenges came with the food apportioned to them.

Daniel felt that eating the king’s food would be defiling to him. Helm shares different reasons that might be the case, among them the possibilities that the food violated Israel’s dietary laws, or possibly had been offered to Babylonian idols. But Daniel doesn’t rail against this requirement. He very respectfully asks the person in charge of them if they could eat vegetables and water for ten days and see how they fared. At the end of that time, Daniel and his three friends “were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food” (Daniel 1:15). So the steward let them eat what they wanted.

This set the tone for the rest of Daniel’s interactions. He never seemed hateful or bitter. He seemed to genuinely care about the king when he had bad news to deliver.

In addition, Daniel was faithful to God, praying three times a day toward Jerusalem, even when threatened with the lion’s den for doing so.

Besides the famous lion’s den story, Daniel contains the account of his three friends who were threatened with the fiery furnace for not bowing down to the king’s statue. Their famous words continue to encourage us in our day: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (3:17-18).

And then there’s Nebuchadnezzar’s fall from pride to live like an animal for seven years, until he acknowledges God and is restored to sanity and to his kingdom.

To a mother, Daniel is an encouraging example that young people can live in an ungodly culture and not be taken in by it: they can be “in the world and not of it,” and even more, be a testimony to it.

Daniel is also a stellar example of standing faithful to God in a way that is not condescending or demeaning to those who don’t believe as he does.

The second half of Daniel’s book is what Helm calls apocalyptic literature, which he defines as “an unveiling–a pulling back of the curtain on the unseen transcendent world and its role in bringing this present world to an end (p. 127).

These chapters in Daniel contain some of the most argued-over passages of the Bible. But Helm encourages us not to get lost in numbers and predictions and to remember the purposes for which God gave these visions and dreams to Daniel. They show God’s sovereignty over world affairs, the fact that He has a timeline in mind, His care for His people, His remembrance and faithfulness to His covenant.

In fact, these themes are woven throughout Daniel. One section of Helm’s book that had the biggest impact on me was his pointing out the phrase “The Lord gave” in chapter 1.

  • “The Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into [Nebuchadnezzar’s] hand” (verse 2).
  • “God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs” in charge of their food (verse 9).
  • “As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams” (verse 17).

Even though I know looking for repeated words or phrases is a key factor in Bible study, somehow I never noticed these or put them together.

Helm also brings out how various parts of the book point to Christ.

Some of the other quotes that stood out to me:

What Daniel has to offer us is the same thing those first readers must have gleaned: a knowledge that God is still at work, and a confidence that as with those who came before us, it is possible to remain faithful to Christ in our own day and fruitful in our life work (p. 15).

The bulk of Daniel’s life (and ours) is orchestrated by God to be lived out in regulated and strikingly ordinary ways. If we are looking to be useful to him and his ever-expanding kingdom, we ought to be prepared to show up day after day, and decade after decade, simply playing our regular part in the melodic line he is orchestrating (p. 70). [This is said in the context that there are only nine events recorded over the seventy years of Daniel’s life. The rest of his days were “ordinary.”]

God is in the business of revealing himself to prominent, powerful people. He often uses a difficulty in life to get their attention, as well as an ordinary follower of Christ who is ready to speak into the situation (p. 84).

As followers of Christ, we don’t need to be happy about the humiliation of others. Remember, God intends to make a worshiper out of this king (p. 90).

I didn’t agree with every little point Helm made. But overall, this book was a great companion in reading Daniel.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Review: The Silmarillion

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The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien is a collection of stories and history which precedes The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in its setting. Wikipedia says a draft of it was written after The Hobbit’s success, but it was rejected by the publisher. Tolkien went on to write The Lord of the Rings trilogy. After his death in 1973, his son, Christopher, edited, arranged, and added material to publish this book in 1977.

My volume has a foreword by Christopher, in which he says the notes and stories in The Silmarillion, though it wasn’t called that at the time, date back half a century earlier and were added to by his father even in his last years. Christopher writes that his father came to view this book as seeming like a compendium from different (fictional) characters, added to through the years. That helps account for differences of style and tone through the book. It also contains a few separate works and a short summary of The Lord of the Rings at the end. One of these stories was “The Rings of Power,” which the recent series is based on. Taken all together, this provides the history of Tolkien’s mythology.

This edition also contains a very long letter from Tolkien to an editor friend “justifying and explaining” why he thought The Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings should be published together (for what it’s worth, I think it was wise to separate them). Christopher said he thought this letter was “a brilliant conception of his conception of the earlier ages,” so he included it here are well.

Tolkien says here that he dislikes allegory and writes in the style of myth and fairy tales, though he acknowledges both of those genres use allegorical language. These stories have to do with “Fall, Mortality, and the Machine,” though also with “Art (and Sub-creation) and Primary Reality.” (p. 2, Kindle version). He writes “I believe that legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth’, and indeed present aspects of it can only be received in this mode” (p. 2). C. S. Lewis said something similar: after he had written directly about spiritual truth in Mere Christianity and other books, he wove some of the same truths in stories.

The Silmarillion covers the first two “ages” of Tolkien’s stories, beginning with the creation of the world by Eru, also called Ilúvatar. The angelic-type being he created, the Ainur, then created other things through music. But “it came into the heart of one of them, Melkor [also called Morgoth], to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar; for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself” (p. 4).

Some of the Ainur went to live on the world their music created. Later came Elves, called the Firstborn, and later still Men, called Followers.

Much of the book is good vs. evil, the rise and fall of individuals and empires. Some of it is written as history, but a few stories are interwoven.

I thought these lines were particularly apt:

Reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment! (p. 2).

There are three phases in their fall from grace. First acquiescence, obedience that is free and willing, though without complete understanding. Then for long they obey unwillingly, murmuring more and more openly. Finally they rebel–and a rift appears between the King’s men and rebels, and the small minority of persecuted Faithful (pp. 2-3).

The title comes from three rings, called the Silmarils crafted with the light of the Two Trees of Valinor before Melkor destroyed them. Melkor stole them and put them in his crown, but battles are fought for them later on.

In the latter part of the book, Sauron, something of a disciple of Melkor, becomes the main villain. He creates the “one ring to rule them all” which figures into The Lord of the Rings.

The wizards and hobbits don’t come into the story until the last few pages. Gandalf shares a line which will become a theme in LOTR: “Help shall oft come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter” (p. 307).

I listened to the audiobook, read well by Andy Serkis, who played Gollum/Smeagol in the Peter Jackson LOTR films several years ago. I also have the Kindle version, and I think it might have been better to read it than listen to it. Though I enjoyed the audiobook, I found my attention wavering in the historical parts. Plus I think seeing all the names would have helped cement them in my mind.

Many individuals and groups have more than one name, which makes for some confusion at first.

Christopher Tolkien added an index of names as well as “family trees” of some of the main characters in the back of the book.

I was inspired to read this book after seeing the first two seasons of The Rings of Power. I’ll never be an expert on Tolkien lore, but that wasn’t my aim. There are several sites online where we can look up particular people, groups, or events in his books. But reading this did give me a better understanding of events in the LOTR. Some things clicked into place, like Aragorn’s heritage, the buried shards of a sword which are found in the later books, the ancestor of the evil giant spider Shelob, who attacks Frodo, the giant eagles who come to various people’s rescue, etc.

So, though this book doesn’t flow as well as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I’m glad I finally read it.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Review: What’s a (Dis)Organized Person to Do?

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What's a Disorganized Person to Do?

Stacey Platt’s What’s a (Dis)Organized Person to Do? is subtitled 317 Ideas, Tips, Projects, and Lists to Unclutter Your Home and Streamline Your Life.

Stacey is a professional organizer and runs a company in New York with a wide variety of clients. One reviewer described this book as an organizer’s Pinterest board.

The book is organized according to different rooms in a house, except that the last chapter deals with trips and moves. Yet within each chapter are tips not just for the physical objects there, but for saving time and energy. Scattered throughout the book are one-hour projects, like organizing under the sink, the junk drawer, the bathroom vanity, or making a master grocery list.

I appreciated that the book was filled with specific tips, though some principles were discussed. Many books on organizing/productivity/time management that I have read are filled with broad principles, or are so rigidly organized as a whole system that they are overwhelming. This books lets you pick and choose what works best for you.

The book is probably meant to be dipped into as a reference resource rather than read straight through as I did. But I didn’t want to miss anything. 🙂

Some of the tips didn’t appeal to me; some I already used; some seemed like overkill. A few were outdated (this book was written in 2010. But I marked many tips to remember.

This appears to be the only book Stacey has written. I didn’t find a website for her. I did find one with her company name, but I am not sure it’s hers.

I can recommend this book as a good resource if you’re looking for organizational tips.

Review: Up from the Sea

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Up from the Sea by Amanda Dykes

Amanda Dykes’ novella, Up from the Sea is a prequel to Whose Waves These Are, one of my all-time favorite Christian novels.

Savannah Mae Thorpe was raised in Georgia, but is taken in by an aunt and uncle in Maine after her parents die. Savannah is more comfortable walking in the forest than the ballroom with her cousins.

When her cousins and their friends tell of an old legend, Savannah recognizes it as a variation on a story her mother told of a young woman who buried a small chest under what came to be known as the Atonement Tree, asking forgiveness while an unknown observer watched.

When Savannah discovers an updated version of the map her mother drew as a child, she goes with her cousins and Alistair Bliss, a local woodsman and employee of the family, to see if they can find the tree. What they discover has ramifications for all of them.

Along with Savannah’s “fish out of water” story, there are hints of troubled secrets in Alistair’s past, Savannah’s uneasy relationship with the cousin she used to count as a friend, and some Revolutionary War history.

Some of my favorite quotes:

Darkness comes, Savannah my girl. But don’t you let it steal your light.

I have a feeling no matter how mixed up the problem is, the answer’s almost always the most simple thing hiding beneath all our worries. That if we scale it back and look for the simplest truth—there lies the thing to do.

So many dashed hopes between the three women present within, yet it felt like a gathering place. God’s hand moving and weaving, stitching these unlikely hearts to one another.

So far, I have loved everything I’ve read of Amanda’s. This was such a sweet story. I loved the development of Savannah’s relationship with Alistair (who becomes the father of the brothers in Whose Waves These Are). I think both books could be read on their own, but they go well together.

Review: Good Hope Road

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Good Hope Road by Lisa Wingate

Good Hope Road by Lisa Wingate begins with a tornado hitting the small town of Poetry, Missouri. Twenty-one-year-old Jenilee Lane is home alone, her father and brother having gone to a cattle auction in Kansas City.. Their house is spared, but Jenilee discovers her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Gibson, and the woman’s granddaughter trapped under debris across their storm cellar.

Jenilee and her family had not been close to their neighbors. Jenilee’s father had a bad temper and kept the family to themselves. They were often regarded as “white trash” by the townspeople. But Jenilee is the only help available, so she gets her neighbors out from the cellar just before Mrs. Gibson’s son and daughter-in-law come.

To keep busy, Jenilee and Mrs. Gibson go to the armory, the only large building in town still standing. Along the way, Jenilee picks up pieces of debris she finds: parts of letters, pictures, certificates.

The veterinarian is the only medical help at the armory until a doctor stranded in the storm is brought in. Jenilee had worked for the vet and seems to have a natural way of calming frightened people while they wait for help.

Jenilee continues going to the armory while waiting to hear about her father and brother. One day she decides to tape the paraphernalia she found on a wall there so people can find their lost treasures. This blossoms into giving hope to people.

Mrs. Gibson begins to see there is more to Jenilee than she’d thought. She also runs into an injured man at the armory with whom she’d had a long-running feud. At first she can’t spare a kind word for him. But she sees sides to him that she had forgotten were there.

As neighbors help neighbors and helpers come from others areas, they see each other with fresh vision and discover good things can arise from tragedies.

The book touches on multiple themes: the difficulties of an abusive family; how we can too easily misjudge others; the need to let go of the past; the fact that difficulties can bring out the best and worst in people; and faith, hope, and forgiveness

Some of my favorite quotes:

I walked to the kitchen, shuffling the way I do when my knees are like old plow handles and my joints are rusted shut.

It’s humbling to realize maybe you ain’t as good as someone you’ve spent years looking down on.

That part of you that wants to care for other folks is like fresh milk. You might as well pour it out as you go along the path. It don’t . . . keep in a bucket . . . very long.

In town after town, people were building anew. Towns just like our own—small, imperfect places beneath which hid the potential for something larger, something stronger, something we may never have seen, if not for the disaster.

The book is the second in a series of five, the sequel to Tending Roses (linked to my review). It’s been a few months since I read the first book, but I didn’t see any characters I recognized in this one. In the author’s notes at the end of the book, she explains one distant connection with the first book which will be delved into later.

There were a few “damns” and misuses of the Lord’s name. But otherwise, this was a great book.

Review: The Tiny Crown

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The Tiny Crown by Susan Barnett Braun

In The Tiny Crown by Susan Barnett Braun, Lucinda is a sixteen-year-old high school student who is discontent with her mundane life. One teacher seems out to get her. She wants the cute guy to ask her to the homecoming dance, but she’s afraid the nerdy guy will ask first.

Lucinda loves England and dreams of traveling to “the land of hope and glory” one day. She’s obsessed with royals. What could be more fun than being a princess or having a handsome prince fall in love with you?

She knows her family could never afford to go to England. But, to her surprise, one morning her mother announces that she got bargain tickets for them to do just that!

Lucinda enjoys sight-seeing with her family. When visiting Buckingham palace, she spies a corgi and runs after it–only to find herself passing through the wall into another realm.

While Lucinda finally gets a taste of the life of her dreams, she may discover that royalty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Susan is a long-time blog friend at Girls in White Dresses. She first wrote this book on Kindle’s Vella, which allowed authors to post their books a chapter at a time. Vella is defunct now, but this book is available as an ebook or paperback.

I had read of Susan’s visit to England a while back on her blog, and it was fun to see some of those details show up in this book.

Susan tells more about the book here. The main audience for the book is teens and young adults, but I enjoy a good twist on the Cinderella story. Susan says most of her early readers have been adult women. Susan writes, “The book isn’t overtly Christian, but it has a definite Christian worldview” and “You will probably enjoy ‘The Tiny Crown’ if you 1)can remember some of the angst you experienced as a teen, or 2)would enjoy a little trip to some of London’s most famous spots, or 3)like reading about medieval times and living in a castle, or 4)would enjoy a foray into fantasy, while realizing at the same time that some wishes are best left unrealized.”

I very much enjoyed Lucinda’s journey.

Review: Between the Sound and Sea

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Between the Sound and Sea

Between the Sound and Sea is “Inspirational Contemporary Fiction with History and Mystery at a North Carolina Lighthouse.” The Sound in the title is Pamlico Sound in the Outer Banks of NC, but the title has several layers of meaning.

Josephina Harris–Joey–owns a fledgling event-planning business in Copper Creek, TN, where she grew up. She had helped her father and brother in their restoration business until her father retired and sold the business. But the new owner cheated people, who, for some reason, blamed Joey’s father. Her parents decided to make a new start in Florida. Joey’s customers have cancelled events one by one

When Joey’s friend sends her an ad about help wanted to restore a lighthouse and cottage on a North Carolina island, Joey decides to apply. If she gets the job, it will give her an income to tide her over and give her time to think about what she should do next.

Joey travels to NC and meets the owner of the lighthouse, 81-year-old Walt O’Hare, and his grandson, Finn. Walt had grown up in the area but left after WWII. His best friend, Cay, short for Cathy, had been the lighthouse keeper’s daughter. During the war, her father’s body had mysteriously washed up on shore, but Cay was never found and presumed dead. Walt wants to restore the lighthouse in their memory. Finn is not so sure this idea of his grandfather’s is a good one and is even less sure Joey is the person for the job. But he acquiesces.

It soon becomes clear that Walt has other reasons for wanting to restore, reasons which he is not sharing.

The people in town tell of strange things happening on the island over the years. Some say ghosts inhabit the island. Others say Cay’s father was working for the Nazis.

As Joey begins restoration, she finds patched-up places in the lighthouse’s inner walls. When one area begins chipping, she discovers what appears to be a lighthouse keeper’s log inside–but the events described don’t match the official logs.

Local lore describes a “Saint Mae” who rescued people lost at sea. Could these logs belong to Mae? But who is she and why is she not listed among the lighthouse keepers?

When accidents and unexplained things start happening around the lighthouse and cottage, Joey wonders what’s at the bottom of it all.

Besides the lighthouse mystery, Joey, Walt, and Finn all deal with regrets from their past and indecision about how to handle the future. There’s a secondary story line involving a teenage boy with a troubled past.

I enjoyed how the story unfolded, sharing what really happened with Cay, who Mae was, how everything connected, and how each character found peace. The restoration of the lighthouse seemed a subtle metaphor for the needed restoration available to each character.

I also loved that the author had Christian characters doing Christian things without being heavy-handed about it. Some Christian fiction is so subtle, there’s almost nothing Christian about it. It’s refreshing to find truly Christian fiction.

A couple of favorite quotes:

God meets us right where we’re at. And maybe things in our lives get broken down and beat up along the way. The good news is restoration work is kind of His specialty.

I’m grateful to have played a role, but I wasn’t the planner orchestrating this event.
This one was in the hands of One far more skilled than I, gently guiding even when we were all half certain we’d lost our way.

A couple of well-worded descriptions caught my ear, too: “the comfort of an oversized sweater worn on a crisp fall morning” and “Her voice was wispy like fog over water.”

I listened to the audiobook read by Rebecca Quinn Robertson, who did an okay job. She spoke too softly sometimes.

As I sat down to write this review, I looked up the book on Amazon and reread the first few pages in their free sample. I had forgotten how it began, with an older woman telling a young boy about Saint Mae. I was delighted to realize who those characters were later in the story.

Overall, this was a great read that I am happy to recommend.

Review: The Librarian of Saint-Malo

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The Librarian of Saint-Malo

In the novel, The Librarian of Saint-Malo, by Mario Escobar, World War II broke out on the day Jocelyn and Antoine married. She developed tuberculosis on their honeymoon and struggled with her health for a long time.

Jocelyn worked as a librarian’s assistant in Saint-Milo, France, a port city that was once a haven for privateers. Antoine was eventually called for military service. When the Nazis invaded France, Jocelyn and her friend, bookstore owner Denis, hid some of the most valuable and important books away before the Nazis could either destroy or steal them.

A Nazi officer took over one of the bedrooms in Jocelyn’s apartment. The officer in charge of going through the books at the library was kinder and did not search as thoroughly as he could have for forbidden or valuable books.

The longer the Nazis occupied the area, the worse things got: food shortages, restrictions, people being herded and sent to concentrations camps–including Denis.

When the tide turned and the Nazis saw they were beginning to lose the war, they refused to surrender or retreat from Saint-Malo in an effort hold off Allied forces from getting further inland. So the city was besieged by American bombs to try to drive out the Nazis, leaving it nearly totally destroyed.

The book is written as a series of letters from Jocelyn to an author she admires so that he might tell her story. But most of the chapters weren’t really written as letters. When Jocelyn addresses the author at intervals, it seems she does so almost as a reminder to the reader that she’s writing letters.

Escobar writes in his author notes that this book was inspired by a visit he took to Saint-Malo as well as an account of a love story someone shared with him. He shares what circumstances and characters were based on real people.He writes that he “wanted to show the suffering of the common people during the German occupation of France and home in on the terrible persecution that the occupation unleashed on culture and books in particular” (p. ix).

I’ve read a number of WWII novels, mainly because that seems to be the most popular era for historical fiction. Usually this genre details some of the awful things people went through during that time but also highlights the bravery and humanity of the characters and leaves one feeling inspired and hopeful.

But this book fell flat for me, especially the ending. I never really connected with Jocelyn. The fact that this book was translated from another language and written by someone from another culture may have contributed to some of the thinking and conversations seeming a little unnatural to me.

Plus the author had characters, mainly Jocelyn, making sweeping generalizations. At one point she comes to see the wife of the marshal’s daughter because she’s been told letters from her husband have been sent there. She remarks, “I thought about how the rich and powerful never lose a war; they can adapt to any circumstance, as if pain and suffering were never meant for them (p. 46)–as if no one rich or powerful ever suffers. In another place, she says, “Heroism is just selfishness” (p. 46). She writes to her author-correspondent, “Being a writer means feeling things at a deeper level than everyone else and knowing how to communicate those depths, helping readers to see reality in a way they never have before” (p. 112). I agree with the second half of the sentence, but not the first. She tells an officer, “You fail to understand women, Lt. Bauman. We are not moved by ideals—that is a banal game ever played by men. We’re driven by something much deeper that really makes the world turn: affections” (p. 116). That doesn’t make sense to me at all.

And then there’s a vulgar expression that I thought was more modern uttered by the Marshall.

I had thought this was a Christian fiction novel, but it doesn’t seem to be. “Fate” is mentioned several times.

One good thing from the book was learning about Saint-Malo, which I had never heard of before. Somehow it was rebuilt after all the destruction and is now a resort town.

Plus there were a few quotes I loved. A couple of my favorites:

My hope is that someday, when humanity regains its sanity, people will know that the only way to be saved from barbarianism is by love: loving books, loving people, and, though you may call me crazy, loving our enemies. There’s no doubt that love is the most revolutionary choice and, therefore, the most persecuted and reviled (p. 2).

Literature is a weapon against evil (p. 124).

Since Escobar is a new author to me, I looked up several reviews of this book when I saw it on sale. Opinions were mixed. Some, like me, felt the book fell short in some ways; others loved it.

(Sharing with Bookish Bliss Quarterly Link-Up)

Ezekiel: The God of Glory

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Ezekiel: The God of Glory

Ezekiel can seem like an intimating book of the Bible at first, with his many visions, odd heavenly creatures, acted-out sermons, and prophecies.

There’s much going on in Ezekiel’s 48 chapters. The basic idea of the book is that Israel has sinned, worshiping other gods and not living the way God told them to. They thought they were okay because they had the temple. After repeated warnings from various prophets, Israel is conquered and exiled by Babylon. Eventually Babylon destroys the temple in Jerusalem. Ezekiel was taken in the first wave of exiles and given the task of preaching to hard-hearted people who don’t listen to him. Some form of the phrase “You will know that I am the LORD” is used around seventy times in the book.

Eventually, God promises “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses (Ezekiel 36:26-29). The famous vision in chapter 37 of the valley of dry bones that comes to life is a dramatic picture of what God is going to do in their hearts.

God also promises a coming shepherd-king, the Messiah, and a new temple (with much debate over the years whether this temple is literal or symbolic).

During my last reading of Ezekiel, I used Warren Wiersbe’s Be Reverent (Ezekiel): Bowing Before Our Awesome God as an aide while reading the book in my ESV Study Bible with its notes. Last year, I finished the last of Warren Wiersbe’s 50 “Be” commentaries on different books of the Bible. So I wanted to use a different source this time.

I had enjoyed our ladies’ Bible study’s use of the Good Book Company’s Isaiah for You by Tim Chester and 2 Corinthians for You by Gary Millar so I checked to see if there was a “For You” book for Ezekiel. There wasn’t, but while looking I found Ezekiel: The God of Glory by Tim Chester. It’s a six-week, 63-page study guide providing what the publisher called a “whistle-stop tour” through Ezekiel’s 48 chapters.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this format worked for Ezekiel. Perhaps it’s just too big a book to be covered in six chapters. I’m sure Chester had good reasons or highlighting the chapters he did, but they seemed random. There were several key passages I was surprised weren’t covered in the study.

In Isaiah for You, even though Chester only spent thirteen chapters on Isaiah’s 66 books, he summarized the chapters that came between the ones he covered. That helped orient the passages we did study into the book as a whole. Of course, in a smaller study like the one on Ezekiel, there was not space to do that, but it would have helped.

Each chapter’s study seemed fragmented to me. In fact, I was not getting much out of the study at all and thought perhaps I should get the leader’s guide it referred to, only to discover the guide was included in the back of the book. That helped some.

There were individual nuggets throughout the study that ministered to me and brought out truths from Ezekiel, but I was disappointed in the study as a whole. I don’t think the problem is with Chester’s writing since he did such a good job with Isaiah. I just don’t think this format worked well for Ezekiel. It might do better for some of the Bible’s smaller books.

On a side note, I’d heard about The Bible Project’s videos giving animated summaries of different books of the Bible, but had not seen one until it was used in our ladies’ Bible study as an introduction to Hebrews. I looked up their videos on Ezekiel and found them both fascinating and helpful. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

(Sharing with Bookish Bliss Quarterly Link-Up)