Book Review: THE HOUSE ON FOSTER HILL

Title: The House on Foster Hill
Author: Jaime Jo Wright
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 352

It was the cover of the book, with a piano at the bottom of it a beautiful winding staircase, that had drawn me into this book, and it was the cozy mystery that invited me to stay. I was intrigued to find out how the lives of Ivy Thorpe and Kaine Prescott were connected a hundred years apart.

The book is written in the third person past tense point of view of Ivy Thorpe a hundred years ago, and that of Kaine Prescott in the present day. Both these women have been affected by past tragedies, and their sadness is aggravated on coming into contact with Foster Hill.

Ivy assists her father, Dr Thorpe, in medical emergencies and post mortems. She lost her brother in a tragic accident twelve years ago. At that time, she also lost touch with their chidlhoood friend, Joel Cunningham, an orphan. Since then, she has developed a morbid fascination with death. Joel has since returned to the town as the Sherriff’s deputy.

When an unidentified woman is found dead in a hollow in an oak tree near Foster House, Ivy feels very distressed on her account. Learning that the dead woman had given birth just weeks before, she returns to Foster House to find the baby, and is savagely attacked. Determined to find and save the baby, Ivy puts her own life in danger.

Kaine lost her husband, Danny, two years ago, in an accident in which he lost control of his car. Investigations revealed that he had narcotic substances in his blood. Kaine insists that her husband was never a drug user, and that it is therefore a murder. Meanwhile, she is also being stalked. The police believe that she suffers from trauma, and refuse to open Danny’s case, dismissing it as suicide.

Scarred by her tragedy and suffering badly from depression, she decides to move across states to her hometown in Wisconsin, where an unscrupulous realtor cons her into buying Foster House, a dilapidated house that is reputed to be haunted, and that has was the scene of a crime 100 years ago. 

The body of an unidentified woman had been discovered there and Ivy, who had become more than a little interested in the life of the ill-fated woman, had been severely assaulted there.

When Kaine gets there, she realizes that the house is unlivable, dilapidated, and worse, it seems, haunted. Plus, the stalking continues, and Kaine wonders why she seems to attract trouble. In her grandfather’s hometown, she is befriended by Joy, a woman who manages a local store, and Grant Jesse, the romantic interest for Kaine.

Their parallel lives meet when Kaine finds a copy of Dickens’ Great Expectations under the floorboards of the house. The book contains a woman’s writing in the margins. 

The text seems to suggest that the woman was in deep trouble and was calling out for help. It is the same copy that had propelled Ivy to invest in the predicament of the dead woman.

Both women become aware that there is someone out there who will go to any extent to hurt them. Even as their lives are in danger, they are determined to solve the mystery of Foster Hill House. But time is running out, and their unnamed enemy is getting closer. Will it be too late for them, as it for the unidentified woman who was killed in Foster Hill House?

Love enters the lives of Kaine and Ivy in the person of Grant Jesse for Kaine, and Joel Cunningham for Ivy.

Ivy is an unconventional character. She is courageous, prone to unorthodox exclamations and helps her father in post-mortems. I found Ivy more interesting than Kaine, especially since the house was creepier in her day. 

Besides, I felt that Ivy had been actually assaulted. The stalking that Kaine experiences pales in comparison.

By association and on his own strength, Joel felt much stronger than Grant Jesse who doesn’t appear to be a strong character, even though the author tried hard to speak of his strength and  bravery. Grant is supposed to have some experience as a counsellor, which is why, Kaine surmises, he can see through her and he knows exactly what is happening to her. Trouble is, we're not convinced.

The dead Danny doesn’t come alive as a character. Even when he was alive, he was rather lifeless. Of course, the only time we meet him is in Kaine’s memories and even then not so often or so vividly either. You don’t get any impression of deep love between him and Kaine.

Even stranger, she hardly meets Grant and her heart seems to pound. I couldn't understand why. Grant was thoroughly uninspiring and insipid.

There were some errors. In one place, there was the word, emblazed, instead of emblazoned. Kaine is said to have heralded from San Diego, instead of hailed from. In one place, Detective Tamara Hanson is referred to as male in one paragraph.

Patti, the librarian, is referred to, quite unnecessarily, in my opinion, as a gargoyle, while Mr Mason, the curator of the local museum, is described as adorable, in a curator sort of way. What is that supposed to mean?

The writing was okay, rather tepid, I would say. It would have greatly improved in the first person points of view of both women.

The pace was slow and repetitive. The Gothic effort that the author strove to achieve didn’t quite come off well.

Even the element of Christian faith came out as totally forced. Neither Joy nor Grant seemed convincing when they spoke about their beliefs. Their talks on faith appeared unreal. It seemed as if they were either talking in a trance, or reading from a script. No conviction at all.

I can understand Joy never reading her grandmother’s diary scribbled on the pages of Great Expectations, in deference to her wishes, but for Kaine to refrain from reading through the unidentified woman’s diary, when there could have been clues to explain the mystery there, seemed foolish.

The mystery took far too long to get resolved. The book could have been shorter and tighter. Ivy spent an excessively long period of time in feeling upset with Joel even after knowing the compulsions that had driven him away. Her personal drama kept getting in the way of the solving of the mystery.

I was rather disappointed with this one.

(I read a Kindle edition of this book through NetGalley.)

Book Review: BIBLE TRIVIA, JOKES AND FUN FACTS FOR KIDS

Title: Bible Trivia, Jokes and Fun Facts for Kids
Author: Troy Schmidt
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 176

I realised just how little I knew of the Bible, particularly of the Old Testament, when I encountered the questions in this book. Of course, different versions of the Bible worded things differently but that was no excuse for my ignorance. So I set about reading this book with gusto.

There are a number of formats in this book that can be used to enliven Bible learning classes. Multiple Choice questions, Fill-in-the-Blanks, Match the columns, you take your pick.

The Did you know? Section includes fact learning related to the Bible. For instance, the size and scale of Noah’s Ark, the height of Goliath, the sizes of the chapters and verses in the Bible etc. The history is explained with humour. There is also a lot of interesting trivia on the longest and shortest chapters in the Bible, and the length of the verses.

The book begins with Knock, Knock jokes. Most of them are names from the Old Testament, with Matthew, Luke and Jesus, the only exceptions from the New Testament. The funniest one for me was “It’s me, Adam! There’s only one other person on the earth. Who do you think it is?

We also have Multiple Choice Questions from the Psalms, the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The answers follow each question, and that was a relief. On a Kindle, going back and forth between pages is rather tedious.

Are You Smarter Than King Soloman? asks interesting questions, through the medium of Multiple Choice questions. there is a breath of good humour which suffuses the book, suggesting that Bible reading should be a joy, not a chore.

We also have Anagrams from the Old Testament. I enjoyed making words out of the Old Testament names.

Who Art Thou? presents us with questions, each with a series of clues. Each time we click a clue, the number of points we can earn from answering that question goes down.

We also get the details of phrases like “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” that are popularly used in the English language today, but that originated in the Bible.

And then we have the lists, especially the one list that I struggled with all through Sunday School. The listing of the ten plagues that struck Egypt, in the right order. We are also quizzed on the order of the Ten Commandments and the names of Jesus’ ancestors in the order of their birth.

Bible Banter contains some funny one-liners.

Another section calls us to match the names of husbands with wives, fathers and sons, and brothers too. Another quizzes us on the old and new names of well known Biblical characters. We are also asked to match people with the dreams they saw.

The sheer number and variety of questions is astounding. This book could serve as a fantastic way of getting youngsters and older people interested in reading the Bible.


(I received a free copy of this book from Bethany House. I read it on NetGalley.)

Book Review: DELILAH

Title: Delilah
Author: Angela Hunt
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 352

I vaguely knew of the Samson and Delilah story from the Old Testament of the Bible. Years ago, in Sunday School, we read of the story, and all that remains of that reading is a faint memory of a woman called Delilah who is loved by strongman Samson, and how she betrays him by exposing his weakness to the enemy.

That reading had given me the impression that Delilah was a prostitute. Here, Angela Hunt paints her in gentler hues and we see the traumatic back story that prompted Delilah to betray Samson. We understand her motivation for doing what she did.

I enjoyed this fictional retelling of this Old Testament story. It was a good reminder that people are all too human and frail and prone to error, and that all too often, we make the wrong decisions, plagued by poor motivation.

Initially Delilah came across as more likeable than Samson, whose only motivation seemed to be to get a beautiful wife.

After the death of her father, Delilah’s mother marries Adinai, a prominent and wealthy yet kind man whose son, Achish, resents their presence. After Adinai’s death, Achish sells Delilah’s mother’s and maintains Delilah herself as his sexual slave, violating her every night. The young Delilah loves her mother deeply and is determined to rescue her from a life of slavery.

Escaping from their home, Delilah’s first thought is to save her mother. While on the run, she encounters three brothers who help her onward. 

It is in Chapter 13 that Delilah and Samson arrive at the same place, though they don’t meet. It is the wedding of Samson and the innkeeper's daughter. Achish is there too.

Samson is disillusioned by his bride-to-be, and he leaves without even claiming his bride. Delilah is anxious for Samson to take up her cause and avenge her mother’s humiliation and death in servitude. She tells herself, Unlike the men of Judah, I would never betray him. It is an ironically prescient statement.

Because, as we know from the Bible, eventually, she does betray him. But at least here we know why. The reasoning may or may not be true, but at least it makes Delilah seem more human.

The brothers take her to the widow who takes Delilah under her wing at the request of the three brothers. The widow, who has deep faith in Adonai, teaches Delilah how to grow flax, and then how to spin yarn and weave cloth. Living with her, Delilah gets a mother figure and a home. But she never forgets her own mother.

While she lives with the widow, Delilah gives birth to a son, the child of Achish. She feels little love for the boy who she names Yagil. The child’s care is enthusiastically taken up by the elderly widow, who remains unnamed through the book.

And all along, Delilah longs to win over Samson to her cause, to get him on her side and to fight Achish and seek vengeance for her mother who dies even as Delilah struggles to earn enough silver to buy her back.

Upon a day, when Samson comes to drink at their well, Delilah who is living there with her son after the widow's death, lures him with her beauty and by magnifying her attractions.

Samson and Delilah fall in love with each other. They begin to live together and Samson becomes the father figure that Yagil never had. For a while, all is good. Delilah convinces herself that this happiness will last forever.

But it is not to be. The fear of Achish endures. One day he espies her at the well. He threatens to break her again, rape her endlessly, unless she brings Samson to him. With her back against the wall, she is unsure if Samson can beat the Philistine army. If his Adonai could accomplish such a seemingly impossible task. So she makes a deal with the rules of Philistia that she will lead them to Samson, but his life must be spared, Achish killed and herself reinstated to her stepfather’s glory.

What happens next we all know, but it is the manner in which Hunt tells the tale, while simultaneously causing us to feel for both Samson and Delilah, who are, in a sense, both victims, that makes them both real people. 

This book caused me to read up on the stories of Delilah and Samson in the Bible. There I learned that Samson was to have saved Israel from the Philistine oppressors. That was the promise given by Adonai to Samson's parents who had been childless for many years before Adonai blessed them with the miracle of this child.

I liked the characters of Hitzig, Regnar and Warati, the three brothers. They were immensely likeable, and their willingness to stand up for her showed that they were good men.

The chapters alternate between the first person points of view of Delilah and Samson.

Israel is under Philistine rule and the Jews have absolutely no rights. The author weaves the political situation of the time and the attendant conflicts in very smoothly.

I could not understand how Samson could kill 30 Philistine men for their garments and still be perceived as having done the righteous thing.

Rei was an understated character who was always with Samson. He was a servant of Samson, but it is in the end that I realised who he really was.

Samson’s character too undergoes a change. From being brash, he became more gentle and sensitive, in my opinion. More than the love of Delilah, I think, it was the love of Yagil that made him that way.

In the end, I felt sorry for both of them. For how things turned out. 

I would like to recommend this book to anyone who loves Biblical fiction.

(I received a free copy of this book from Bethany House. I read it on NetGalley.)

Book Review: COUNTED WITH THE STARS

Title: Counted With The Stars
Author: Connilyn Cossette
Publisher: Bethany House
Pages: 352

I’ve read a lot of Biblical fiction that saw the characters walking with Jesus. But this was my first experience of reading fiction set in the times of the Old Testament, specifically, around 1448 BC, the time of the Exodus, and the years preceding it.

Kiya, a young Egyptian girl from a wealthy family, is sold as a slave to her father’s friend when his own business suffers losses, plunging him into bankruptcy. Her new mistress, Tekurah, is mean and harsh. Abandoned by her fiancé, Akhum, Kiya has no choice but to submit to Tekurah’s oppression.

Befriended by a Hebrew slave, Shira, Kiya learns of Shira's God, and His power and love for His people. An unwilling and unbelieving listener, Kiya's mind slowly changes as she receives visible proof of the power and might of Shira's invisible God. Nevertheless, she retains her doubts, and it is not until she throws her lot with the Hebrews that she faces an opportunity to resolve her doubts.

That opportunity comes soon enough. When God says that He will smite the first-born among the Egyptians, Kiya and her mother flee to the Hebrews in order to secure the safety of her physically challenged brother, Jumo. They leave Egypt along with Shira’s family, even as Kiya harbours fears that the Pharoah’s army will track down the Israelites and advance upon them, for the sake of wreaking vengeance.

One by one, it seems to Kiya, that Shira’s faceless and nameless God is waging war against each of her Egyptian deities. When Tekurah beats her mercilessly and has her chained in the cellar, Shefu signs her release and tells her to take her brother and mother to the Hebrews and to seek shelter there. For this is the night when Yahweh has made known that all the firstborn Egyptian males will be killed.

The story follows the first person point of view of Kiya, and explores her relationships with her mother, brother.

The pace of the book is slow at first. Long chapters are spent with the wayfarers as they wait for the Lord to reveal Himself. This wait is emblematic of the patience displayed by the Hebrew people over the course of over 400 years spent under Egyptian servitude. Imperceptibly, the pace picks up.

The character of Kiya undergoes a change. Initially, she is a proud and even slightly haughty Egyptian, and we don’t feel too much sympathy for her. The fact that she is heedless of the friendship offered by the slave girl, Shira, also makes her seem unworthy of that friendship. 

The suffering she undergoes at the hands of Tekurah helps her character undergo a transformation, and she begins to see the suffering of the Hebrew slaves she has taken for granted. She also begins to see the worth of Eben, Shira’s brother.

The other characters are all well etched. Tekurah, the tyrant mistress, who showed no mercy to her slaves; Shefu, the kind master; Shira, the Hebrew slave who is ever optimistic, and Eben, who goes on to become Kiya’s love interest. Even Jumo, who we meet much later in the story, endears himself to us.

Shira’s faith, even in captivity, infects Kiya and soon she finds herself pleading to Shira’s God, praying for mercy and release when her own gods seem unwilling or powerless to help.

Moshe, the great deliverer, is but a presence here. Only once does he walk across the pages, in a brief interaction with Kiya, where he assuages her fears. But it is unmistakably his actions, and the Pharoah’s reactions to them, that drive the story onward.

The writing is beautiful. The author leads us straight into the Egypt of the Old Testament. I was impressed with the research about Egyptian gods, their calendar and the Egyptian way of living prevalent at that time.

I had always found the Exodus narrative very interesting. The story of the plagues visited by Yahweh upon Pharoah and the land of Egypt for his refusal to let the Israelites go, it has always seemed to me, to be one of the most colourful parts of the Old Testament. Back in Sunday School, decades ago, we used to enjoy the story narrated by our teacher.

A later viewing of the Charlton Heston starrer, The Ten Commandments, served to reinforce the perception of a Pharoah receiving his just desserts. We barely spared a thought for the thousands upon thousands of Egyptians, men, women, children, and livestock, that suffered those plagues.

This book enabled me to see the plagues through the Egyptian eyes of Kiya, and to understand the agonies, horrors and discomforts her people went through. Her descriptions made those plagues seem more real. Each plague is worse than the preceding one. The plagues beat down the spirit of the Egyptians as also their faith in the invincibility of their Pharoah and their gods.

Of course, despite being well written, I realize that this is historical fiction and not realism. The real plagues must have been far deadlier than anyone’s mind could have imagined.

The author’s victory lies in the fact that she got us to even consider their point of view. When was the last time you read the Exodus narrative and felt the least bit of sympathy for the Egyptians?

Above everything, this book is a love story, between Kiya and Eben, and beyond them, a love story between the Israelites and God.

I would recommend this to anyone who has a taste for Biblical fiction. 

Book Review: AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PRAYING FOR THE WORLD

Title: An Insider's Guide to Praying For the World
Author: Brian C Stiller
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 288

As the Global Ambassador of the World Evangelical Alliance, Brian C Stiller has visited more than 40 countries around the world. These visits have offered him insights into the modalities and complexities of life in those countries. His passion and keenness have helped him forge an understanding of the needs of the people in those places.

As he says, Often it takes travelling through a country before its geography comes into focus and conflicting issues begin to make sense.

Most of these countries are nothing more than dots on a map for us. Realities not our own,

Brian takes us out of ourselves and gets us to think about the lives Christians in these places lead, lives of religious control and persecution and, in worst cases, torture. He takes us through Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Korea, Albania, Romania, Kenya, Nigeria, Turkey etc, a spread of nations from South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Many of these countries are still broken by Communism, the World wars, imperialism, tribal warfare and a host of other issues.

The book is written from the standpoint of the Evangelical Alliance, but I didn’t let that bother me. I thought that the prayers that Brian invited us to pray were heartfelt and so I joined in. After all, I do worship the same Crucified One.

Once inside a country, the author highlights the nation’s troubles through the example of one family or an individual, an example that both isolates the family or individual and holds them up for our notice. While showing us that it is just one instance of many others like it. Of people who served as witness to the Gospel by their lives, often amid difficult conditions.

Each chapter follows the same pattern: A brief history of a particular country, followed by information about its geographical location, the countries that it shares borders with, and the religions practiced by its people. Some of these countries have a high percentage of Evangelical Christians, others a lower percentage, many have a low percentage of Christians.

This section is followed by the dispatch relating to Brian’s visit there, followed by a passage from the Bible, and 3-4 points on which we readers are invited to ponder over and pray for, and finally a closing prayer.

Brian makes each country’s plight his own and writes feelingly about the travails that afflict different countries. He makes each cause for concern a reason to pray.

Some of the chapters relate to people whose lives are a witness to Christ. They include not only Evangelical leaders but also, surprise, the Pope, the spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church. Other chapters are devoted to the World Prayer Movement, and issues like persecution and martyrdom, caring for the vulnerable, Prison Ministry, for Muslims, Mexican prisons, other prison ministries, and on finding new places of Spirit empowerment.

I faithfully prayed the prayers that Brian invited us to pray, and felt no need to question the veracity of the facts presented at the beginning of the chapter on each country. In the chapter on India, however, I found some glaring errors. Brian mentions that India was colonized by Germans, Portuguese and British. The truth is that the Germans never colonized India; the Dutch and the French did, apart from the Portuguese and the British.

Also, Christians in India do not form 7% of the population. Around 2% is the right figure.

Errors such as these lead me to wonder which other facts the author might have inadvertently got wrong.

I had no such grouse against the basic idea of the book, which forced me to think about people in the Third World, countries other than my own, homes to people considerably worse off.

As a general rule, one rarely thinks of others. Here one finds oneself thinking of issues like liberty, religious freedom, mortality, all in countries with unstable governance. For people who need our prayers.

Read this book. More importantly, pray for the intentions mentioned here. I think that is one way in which we can make a difference.

(I received a free copy of this book from Bethany House.)

Book Review: FINDING ME

Title: Finding Me
Author: Kathryn Cushman
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 336









Finding Me by Kathryn Cushman deals with issues of grief, abandonment and trust and the feeling of loss and dejection when one is betrayed by the person one trusts the most. The protagonist here, however, is not the one who was betrayed, but the one who feels someone else’s guilt.

The prologue takes us back 26 years before the present time, and shows how certain events, that were to alter the course of life of many people, were set in motion. David Waters can’t stop thinking of the attractive waitress at the diner he visits every day. His wife is too busy with the children and the demands made on her by their church and the kids’ school and has no time for him. David feels tempted to give in to the attraction posed by the waitress who does not hide her feelings for him.

Twenty-six years later, we meet Kelli Huddleston, a strong character, driven by her sense of ethics and honesty. She does not hesitate to blow the whistle on her unscrupulous employer, and is fired for her pains.

It’s a bad time. Kelli has lost her father and stepmother recently and the mountains of debt are accumulating. Her father and stepmother were the only family she had. Her own mom, and older brother and sister had been killed in a fire that struck their home when Kelli was an infant. That is what her dad, Don Huddlestone, had told her. Even their photographs had been lost in the fire.

While looking through her dad’s safe, out of bounds for her during his lifetime, Kelli is shocked to find photos proving that he had a whole other life as David Waters, and a wife, son and daughter that she knew nothing of. She also learns that David Waters and his one-year-old daughter Darcy had disappeared, and were later presumed dead, in a boat accident.

At first, Kelli wonders if her dad acted as he did because his wife was abusive or of unsound mental health. Her desire to find out more so she can continue with her life lead her to the town of Shoal Creek, Tennessee, where she makes investigations, and finds herself a job with Kenmore, her dad’s old friend. 

Soon she is befriended by Beth, her sister, and Alison, her mother. She is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of her father’s planned disappearance and then leave town before anyone finds out who she really is, but she feels drawn closer to the two women every day. Soon she is consumed by guilt at the realization that she is deceiving them. She looks forward to her reunion with her mother and siblings while fearing it at the same time.

Part of the title involves Kelli’s search for who she really is, the biological family she never knew, as also her struggle to find her way, through the church, to God, the God who is so intimate with her mother and sister, but with whom her father had nothing to do.

Bit by bit, Kelli’s faith increases and she learns bits of her earlier life, and learns of the family and their memories of David and Darcy. After a brief period of antagonism, Kelli and Shane, Kenmore’s son, also become attracted to each other.

Kathryn does a better job when it comes to crafting her female characters than the males here. As a character, Kelli shows her strength by standing up for her values and convictions even at the cost of losing her job. The same honesty is evident in her journal entries which are written in the first person.

Both Beth and Alison come across as wonderful women, fierce in their loyalties and loves. Denice, Kelli’s best friend, is also a pillar of support for Kelli.

Even Kelli’s stepmother manages to gain a bit of our sympathy, as we see her through the letters she wrote to her mother.

The men, however, have to try harder to gain our understanding. David’s own selfishness and willingness to turn his back on his family in order to deviously work out a new life for himself wins him no votes from any reader. Poor Max, Kelli’s brother, suffers because he is absent through the course of the book and is brought in, as an afterthought, in the Epilogue.

Kenmore is the only man who has Kelli’s confidence, and he fares marginally better as a result. Shane’s romance with Kelli, however, comes across as insipid and banal. He seems force-fit to give Kelli the mandatory romance that her life lacked.

The only exceptions to this trend are Rand, Beth’s husband, and Jones, Denice’s husband, who come across as likeable, probably because they are redeemed by their closeness with their wives.

Cushman’s writing is easy. You find yourself settling into this world of her creation very quickly.

The book talks about faith, about believing that God is in control even in difficult times. It is a belief that is tested when Kelli’s pregnant sister, Beth, begins to get dreams about hurting her own baby, and later when she miscarries.

Much as Kelli tries to make amends for her father’s sins, Kenmore who suspected her from the beginning tells her that “There’s only one person who can pay for someone else’s sins, and you’re not Him. He died on a cross a couple thousand years ago.” Kenmore also explains the difference between doing the easy thing and the right thing through the example of Joseph from the Old Testament.



Unlike most Christian fiction, the lead character is not particularly religious. In fact, Kelli is most uncomfortable with ‘church’ people.

Despite the deviousness of the planned disappearance upon which the plot hinges, this book is no thriller. Its concern is with those left behind and how they cope with their feelings of betrayal and with the turn their lives take.

I must confess that towards the end of the book, I just couldn’t stop the tears from free-falling. I’m a total crybaby, of course. But the book is sweet too.

(I received a free e-copy of this book from Bethany House. I read it through NetGalley.)

Book Review: ANSWERING YOUR KIDS' TOUGHEST QUESTIONS

Title: Answering Your Kids' Toughest Questions

Author: Elyse M Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson

Publisher: Bethany House Publishers

Pages: 176

When I signed up to read and review this book, I thought it would serve as a wonderful guide and that it would help me to field the tricky questions right.

I certainly needed the guidance. As a parent, I don’t always have the answers, even though I’d like to have them. As a Christian, I’d like my answers to reaffirm my faith.

Tough job indeed.

Often I struggle with my own doubts and fears. You know what I mean. We are all plagued by questions such as Why does God allow wrongdoing to thrive? Why doesn’t He clean up the mess, when He could so easily do it?

With two children bombarding me with difficult questions (a few weeks ago, La Niña asked me, “Mamma, what is an affair?” and I found myself hemming and hawing, as I fumbled for an answer), I thought this was one resource that would help.

Whatever I imagined that Answering Your Kids' Toughest Questions: Helping Them Understand Loss, Sin, Tragedies, and Other Hard Topics by Elyse M Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson would be, it was not. I had expected the book to be a practical guide that would help parents to answer those tricky questions. I found instead a book that thought it was enough to answer all questions with the same answer: faith.

The authors, a mother and daughter pair, emphasise that the book is not a script. That all questions must be answered in keeping with children’s ages, which they have divided into three age groups, preschool, 5-10, and 11+. In each chapter, they first explain the teaching to adults and then break it down in a manner that will be understood by children. Each chapter ends with a section called, “In a nutshell,” which summarises the answers for those in a hurry.

The authors answer questions like what is sin, what is death and why God allows it to happen, what is satan and hell, why do people get divorced, why and how do some people sin sexually, with sub-chapters on homosexuality, child sexual abuse and pornography, why does God allow natural disasters to happen, and why terrorism exists.

To make things more understandable, the authors use examples from popular films like Star Wars, anecdotes from daily life. They quote heavily from the Bible, proving well their familiarity with the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Here, the authors speak from the vantage point of their faith and trust in God is an oft-repeated theme throughout. And therein lies the rub.

All the answers are from a Christian perspective, and of course, I am a Christian, but I felt a little let down, partly because I was looking for practical answers that one could give to children.

Every chapter is imbued with the conviction that Jesus knows the paths we tread and is with us always. I too have strong faith in Jesus but to keep harping on the same explanation for varying problems to a target audience that has not quite achieved the age of developing a strong faith is, in my opinion, not achieving the promise made in the book title.

While I understand what they were trying to say, I found the book unduly harsh, particularly to those who don’t share the same beliefs.

When explaining terrorism to ages 11 and upwards, she says, “We don’t need to fear someone who wants to kill us because if you are a believer, death is not your final destination.” That is taking things too far. Is a statement like that enough to soothe the fear in a child’s mind, say, a child who has seen some horrific images on TV or in real life? I don’t think so.

Earlier in the book, Jessica’s son asks her, “What if I snap my fingers? Is snapping a sin?” She asks him if he is snapping his fingers because he loves God and his neighbor. The boy replies no, and his mother tells him, “Then according to this verse you have sinned.”

I’m not really equipped to speak on matters relating to theology, but when the author makes a comment like that, I’m already feeling more than a little peeved.

Even when talking about natural disasters, the authors make no mention of the fact that human beings are largely responsible for environmental degradation.

The Death chapter is another example of this strict adherence to matters of the faith. I cannot imagine talking to my son, who is a pre-schooler, in the manner prescribed in the book. Even if I did, I doubt he would understand.

The authors remind us to temper our explanations, based on the children’s perceptiveness and maturity levels, so that our little listeners are able to make sense of them. But the answers they give don’t follow this guideline at all.

While we must encourage our children’s faith, I don’t think this is the way to do it. Continually skirting the minefield of issues that daunt each question, and playing the faith card as the one-stop answer to all questions isn’t the right way to go about building a child’s faith. A child’s faith needs to be nurtured slowly.

And Jessica admits that faith cannot be taught. That we, as parents, can only nudge and guide our children to the right path, and that we need the Holy Spirit to make their faith come alive. I appreciated that sentiment. I was also touched by the parts where she explained the issue of Child Sexual Abuse to children. This section was handled sensitively and it struck a chord with me.

The book ends with an exhaustive listing of books that the authors have referred to for “Suggested reading.”


(I received a free e-copy of this book from Bethany House. I read it through NetGalley.)

Book Review: FOR SUCH A TIME

Title: For Such A Time
Author: Kate Breslin
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 430








For Such a Time by Kate Breslin makes the horrors of the Holocaust come alive. We come to know of the unspeakable acts of cruelty that the Nazis perpetrated and how, among other horrible acts, they used hunger as a weapon to break down the Jews.

Hadassah, the heroine of the novel, is a true heroine in every sense of the word. A Jew, she is sent to the concentration camp at Dachau only to find herself spared the horrors there. She is able to cheat death too, all on account of the false papers that her uncle, Mordecai Benjamin, made for her in the name of Stella to prepare for just this kind of eventuality.

Col Aric Von Schmidt, SS commandant at the transit camp at Theresienstadt, in Czechoslovakia, rescues Stella and takes her to his own home as a secretary. Stella is a “bald, bruised scarecrow of a woman” and there is no reason why the colonel should have picked her for a secretary, other than that he completely believes in the accuracy and validity of her false Aryan papers.

Beginning with hostility, Stella finds herself softening towards him as she becomes aware of his vulnerabilities and also his deep compassion not only to herself but also to the Jews that are prisoners in the transit camp at Theresienstadt.

While Stella herself is comfortable as part of the colonel’s household, she is painfully aware of the horrors that plague her fellow-Jews in the camp. Even though the plight of the Jews at Theresienstadt, despite its severity, is much better than the plight of other Jews in other concentration and death camps. 

Soon Stella feels morally compelled to speak up on behalf of the Jews, particularly an elderly gentleman, her uncle, all of whom are the brunt of the brutalities of the colonel’s men. Captain Hermann and Lieutenants Brucker and Koch think nothing of assaulting the Jews, including the old and the frail, and the children.

A Jew who has lost faith in God, Stella finds her faith and moral spine renewed with every reading of a Bible that she finds in her room. Relating the verses in the Bible with long forgotten verses from the Talmud, Stella prepares to meet the biggest crisis of her life.

Her attempts to do her bit to save the lives of at least some of the Jews expose her to the attentions of the colonel’s men, who are determined to kill him and take over the transit camp. Before long, the truth about her beliefs and faith is exposed and Stella is sent to the concentration camp, from where she and thousands of others will be sent on the ‘death’ train to Auschwitz.


Interspersed with the narrative are Stella’s memories of the time she spent in the concentration camp at Dachau, and the oppression she suffered at the hands of the Nazis, particularly the officers of the Gestapo.

The narrative is mostly from the viewpoint of Stella, with the colonel as the unmistakable enemy, the Nazi and Jew killer. Occasionally it shifts to the viewpoint of the colonel, and we find ourselves undergoing a change in our attitude towards him.

The story mirrors in its barest outline that of Esther and Mordecai in the Old Testament of the Bible. Kate draws parallels between the Biblical story of Esther (also known as Hadassah), her cousin Mordecai and the king, and Stella, whose real name is Hadassah, her uncle Mordecai Benjamin, better known as Morty, and the colonel.

Reading this story is a grim reminder of the worst excesses of the Holocaust. How the Nazis meted out the harshest of punishments for the smallest of crimes. How the Jews had to put up with terrible consequences for the most innocuous of actions. How young children were forced by the war and by the atrocities of the Nazis to grow before their time.

The Holocaust was the bleakest and the darkest period in the history of human cruelty. To see hope and love and faith and redemption would have been well nigh impossible for those who lived and survived its horrors as well as for those who fell prey to its many atrocities. And yet Kate Breslin has dared to build a romance in this tumultuous time, a time of genocide and senseless killing, particularly of the old and the very young, and of others who served no purpose in the agenda of one insane man. That’s not the only gamble that Kate has pulled off.

At a time when millions were struggling against hopelessness and despair, she has breathed faith, strength and courage and the willingness to sacrifice all, even one’s life, for one’s fellowmen.

Her writing is poignant and beautiful and invites you to understand the pain that millions of Jews suffered on account of one twisted mind.


Worth reading. And re-reading.

(I received this book for free from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review. I read it on Netgalley.)

Book Review: DEATH BY THE BOOK

Title: Death by the Book
Author: Julianna Deering
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 317










Death by the Book by Julianna Deering reminds us of the best traditions of Agatha Christie, the grande dame of murder mystery fiction herself.

Drew Farthering, a young heir to a fortune, loves reading murder mysteries, and is not averse to attempting to solve one himself. He is in love with Madeline Parker, an American, who, I gather, came over to stay with her Uncle Mason, in the previous book in the series. Uncle Mason, who was murdered in that book, was also the step-father of Drew.

In this book, Drew’s solicitor, Quinton Montford, is found dead with a cryptic note pinned to his chest, using a hatpin. The note is an allusion to the dead man’s profession Next, a doctor at the golf club is found dead with another hatpinned note on his chest. Deciphering the cryptic notes and tracing them to Shakespeare is a challenge that Drew enjoys tackling. Clearly, the killer is a Shakespeare enthusiast.

Later, Drew’s friend Roger is picked up as the suspect in the murder of Clarice, a bohemian girl he loved. This one too carries the killer’s signature style. Drew must find the murderer if he is to save his guiltless friend from being punished.

Drew, asked to keep his eyes and ears open in an unofficial capacity by Inspector Birdsong, spends his time hunting up clues. In this effort, he receives able assistance from friends Nick and Madeline. However, while Nick often accompanies Drew, Madeline is just a sounding board for his flashes of insight.

Before long, another body is found. By this time, it becomes evident that the bodies are showing up closer to home, and that the killer is edging ever so closer towards Drew or someone dear to him.

While everyone has a motive for at least one of the murders, no one has a motive for all. Nor do most people have an alibi for all the murders, leaving the field open for us in terms of the person to suspect.

While the novel reminds one of the best traditions of Agatha Christie, in that the killer turns out to be the one person you haven’t found guilty in your head, here the pace is far more laidback, with the romance taking up far too much time. Even when the bodies begin to pile up, you do not feel any sense of alarm or fear for the characters.

As a heroine, Madeline is ahead of her times. She admits to loving the “look, sound, touch, taste and smell of him (Drew),” a man who “always smelled like freshly laundered linen, new books, tea and honey.”

The dialogue is often witty and lively, especially that between Drew and Inspector Birdsong and between Drew and Madeline’s Aunt Ruth. There is a charming air of repartee that flows with neither willing to concede the last word to the other.

The beauty of Christian fiction is its ability to direct our attention to God and His indefatigable mercy in the face of the obstacles and challenges we face, as also our many failings, errors and hypocrisies. In Death by the Book, Christian elements such as the power of forgiveness, of no one being beyond the reach or need of God’s mercy, of the need to refrain from judging another unjustly or even harshly are scattered throughout this book. 

Drew is a devout Christian, and his interactions with the characters he encounters are imbued with his realisation that we are all guilty and that we all need His unfailing grace and mercy. Never have I read a murder mystery where the essence of Christ’s teaching was brought out so beautifully.

But of course, as far as pure murder mysteries go, there is still a flavour that is wanting. The killer’s motive for killing no less than four people is far from convincing. Also, while the notes pinned to the victims’ chests provide much food for thought, they are not strictly related to the killer’s motive, but only serve to exercise Drew’s mental faculties. A sort of elaborate game, if you will.

All said and done, I’d still recommend this one for being such a fun read. Who would have thought a murder mystery could be clean?





(I received this book for free from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review. I read it on Netgalley.)

Book Review: ANGELS IN THE FIRE

Title: Angels in the Fire
Author: Dann Stadler
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 208








Angels in the Fire: The Dramatic True Story of an Impossible Rescue by Dann Stadler is the story of the author and his wife, Tracey, specifically of the horrific accident that struck them on the night of September 7, 1989, as a result of a head-on collision with a drunk driver who was driving at 75 miles per hour in the wrong lane. It was their fourth wedding anniversary and they were returning home from dinner to Tracey's parents' house where they were then vacationing.

The novel begins in the present tense, in the third person, describing the events that led to the collision. The crash causes the cars to char, killing the drunk driver on the spot, but Dann and Tracey miraculously survive. The high-speed impact leaves behind twisted metal, and results in both the Stadlers becoming a wreck of their former selves.

When fire extinguishers could not douse the fire, and it grew in intensity every second, some people made an almost superhuman but unsuccessful attempt to break the door down and rescue the couple while a man dropped down to his knees in prayer and supplication.

And then suddenly in front of everyone's stupefied gaze, a lone figure emerged from the woods and reached the car. Tracey's spirit recognised the figure as Jesus, her Saviour, even as her lifeless body was taken out of the car that no one could open just moments earlier.

While Dann's body caught fire, everything from the bumper in crashed on Tracey's lower body, leaving her with sixteen fractures between her pelvis and knee alone. They ended up staying in hospital for more than four-and-a-half months, undergoing numerous surgeries and skin grafts in an attempt to repair the damage. 

Medical experts warned them that life would always be a struggle, in which they would be largely dependent on others even for small routine tasks, and that they would never be able to have another baby. At the time of the crash, the Stadlers were parents to nine-month-old Meghan.

Contrary to these dire predictions, both Dann and Tracey went on to live a normal life as far as possible, including taking up their jobs without any respite in their responsibilities. They also went on to become parents for the second time to Rebekah and later adopted a third child, a baby girl, who they named Emma.

Interestingly, the last thing that Dann remembered telling Tracey before the crash occurred was to keep her seat belt on. In many ways, Tracey's faith works as a safety belt for the couple, helping them to survive and thrive in spite of all indications to the contrary. 

The book is a remarkable testimony to the fact that when God tests us with difficulties, He always tempers those difficulties with His steady love and grace. The account is also a reminder that God's angels are always with us, and that they guard and guide us, and watch over us as we go through life.

Besides these angels, Stadler also thanks the many real angels that helped them with their support and presence. These angels included his own parents and Tracey's too. Tracey's father takes up the task of looking after little Meghan while her parents are in the hospital.

While it seems incredible that anyone could still be alive after having been through such a terrible accident, the fact that the Stadlers are alive is proof that miracles happen and that when the going gets tough, faith is all that is required to live life well.

I received this book for free from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review. I read it on Netgalley.