Faith is the greatest adventure.
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Tough topics handled with grace and truth as women (and men) on the home front face real-life challenges and make hard choices. My rating: ★★★★☆
Content warnings: unwed pregnancy, infidelity, romance (moderate) | Click here to read full post
I gave this book a try because I had heard that Robin Lee Hatcher did not shy away from weaving real Christian truth into her stories. Happily, I found this to be true. There are many, many authors whom I would not trust with issues like unmarried pregnancy, emotional infidelity, and marital unfaithfulness. But Robin confronted each of these topics with real biblical truth about repentance, grace, resisting temptation, and facing consequences. The story wasn’t completely happily-ever-after; sin does indeed have consequences. But for those who chose to turn to Christ and obey him, there was hope.
The writing style was easy to follow, even with the multiplicity of point-of-view characters, and the struggles and lessons each character went through were so easy to relate to—not everyone has been tempted in these specific ways, but we’ve all been tempted in some way, and Robin captured the struggle of knowing the right thing to do but still struggling to do it.
The victory club aspect didn’t play a very big part in the story; I would have liked to see more of the actual work that entailed. And one of my biggest pet peeves with historical fiction is when characters use a Bible version that is not accurate to the time period, so I found that distracting. There were one or two scenes that were borderline too detailed for me, so I don’t recommend this book to readers who are sensitive to the honest (though gracious) portrayal of some ugly life issues, but otherwise I enjoyed this book and the thought-provoking nature of the story. I look forward to my next read by this author.
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Jayna Baas is the author of Preacher on the Run. She is a member of ACFW and The Christian PEN: Proofreaders and Editors Network. Sign up for her newsletter and receive a free short story here.