Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

Jul6

Published in 1938, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a book about grace and joy. Miss Pettigrew, a poverty-sticken, middle-aged, rather incompetent governess accidentally finds herself in the apartment of a promiscuous night-club singer, Delysia LaFosse. Even though Miss Pettigrew knows she should tell Miss LaFosse the truth, that she is there under false pretenses, and even though she knows the folly of Miss LaFosse’s way of life with men in and out of the apartment as if it had a revolving door, Guinevere Pettigrew can’t tear herself away from the first adventure that has ever presented itself in her entire life.

I found this one oddly delightful. Miss Pettigrew begins as the stereotypical repressed spinster, but she turns out to be surprisingly full of wisdom and intuition and zest for life. She just needs the right soil in which to grow and bloom, and Delysia LaFosse and her friends provide that avenue for growth. Delysia and her set are rather shocking in their behavior, but one gets the idea that they are more naive than calculating. And Miss Pettigrew is able, with her clear-sighted advice and her knack for saying the right thing at the right time, to straighten them out and make sure that the right man wins the hand of the fair lady and that the lady takes her chance when it is offered.

I’m rather skeptical about the movie based on this book. I think it would take a deft hand to keep the story from becoming a sexually titillating farce, and I see very little indication in the reviews that it didn’t become just that when Hollywood got hold of it. If I’m right, the book is much better.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Jul5

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Lisa Schroeder.

Who was the greater monster: Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin? This website says that Hitler was responsible for the death of about 12 million civilians while Stalin killed more than 20 million with his purges, executions, and repressive and ruinous policies. Who knows exactly? But one of the worst places to be would be caught between the two men and their armies and their insane, competitive desire for power. Lithuania in 1941, the setting for this novel, was in exactly that place: caught between the Nazis and the Stalinist Russians and crushed, co-opted, and destroyed by first one evil regime and then the other.

Fifteen year old Lina is preparing to go to art school when the NKVD comes to arrest her, her younger brother, Jonas, and her mother. Lina’s father has already disappeared, assumed to be arrested, and sent to some unknown prison. Or perhaps he’s dead, executed for the same unknown “crime” that causes the deportation of the rest of the family. What follows this beginning is a story as harrowing and cruel as any Jewish Holocaust story that you’ve read. Lina and her family starve, freeze, suffer, are mistreated, experience callous injustice, and barely survive their experience.

Author Ruta Sepetys is the American born daughter of a Lithuanian refugee. She wrote this story to “give a voice to the hundred of thousands of people who lost their lives during Stalin’s cleansing of the Baltic region.” Of course, this story, even though it is written to be representative of what happened to many Lithuanians during World War II, doesn’t tell the whole story. Some Lithuanians collaborated with the Nazis in opposition to the Russians. Some fought against the Soviet occupation. Some Lithuanians with ties to Germany fled to Germany during the first or second Soviet occupation of Lithuania. Some Lithuanians betrayed their neighbors to the NKVD or to the Nazis. Some Lithuanians saved their Jewish neighbors form the Nazis. It was a complicated and horrific time, and the book Between Shades of Gray reflects those complications. It is an excellent look into one family’s experience. Lina’s journey is based on interviews that Ms. Sepetys had with many Lithuanian survivors and their families.

Lithuania gained its independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990.

Happy Fourth of July

Jul3

A favorite song for the day: Ben Shive’s 4th of July

From last year: 52 Ways to Celebrate Independence Day

From 2008: Celebrate the Fourth of July

From 2005: Read, White and Blue: Books and Links for the Fourth of July

We will be enjoying the parade in the morning and fireworks in the evening in Friendswood, TX. If you live in the USA, what are you doing to celebrate God’s grace and mercy upon our nation?

Sunday Salon: Books Read in June, 2011

Jul3

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction:
The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton. Semicolon review here.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. Semicolon review at The Point, Youth Reads
You Killed Wesley Payne by Sean Beaudoin. Hard-boiled teen detective solves a high school murder mystery with way too much farking and bobbing. I wanted to scream, “If you can’t clean up your language (best choice), just use the word already. Enough with the euphemisms!”
Famous by Todd Strasser. Semicolon review here.
My Life, the Theater and Other Tragedies by Allen Zadoff. Semicolon review here.
13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson.
Divergent by Veronica Roth. Look for my review at The Point: Youth Reads sometime soon.
Matched by Ally Condie.
The Queen’s Daughter by Susan Coventry.
Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang.

Adult FIction:
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson.
The Ambition by Lee Strobel. Semicolon review here.
The Moon in the Mango Tree by Pamela Binnings Ewen. Semicolon review here.
City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell. Semicolon review here.
The Skin Map by Stephen Lawhead. CLIFFHANGER warning: Do not read this book unless you are prepared to wait however long it takes to have published however many books Mr. Lawhead is planning to write to complete this series. The story is quite unfinished in this first volume. I find this year-long wait between parts of a story annoying and unacceptable, even though I admire Mr. Lawhead as a writer.
The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne.

Nonfiction:
The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers.
Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived by Rob Bell. Semicolon review here.
The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Fatherâ€™s Nazi Boyhood by Mark Kurzem. Semicolon review here.
Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff. Semicolon review here.
Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me: A Memoir . . . of Sorts by Ian Cron. Semicolon review here.
American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, The Birth of the “It” Girl, and the Crime of the Century by Paula Uruburu. Semicolon review here.
The World Is Bigger Now: An Americna Journalist’s Release from Captivity in North Korea by Euna Lee with Lisa Dickey.

Saturday Review of Books: July 2, 2011

Jul1

“There was indeed a ‘frightful lot’ of books. The four walls of the library were plastered with them from floor to ceiling, save only where the door and the two windows insisted on living their own life, even though an illiterate one.”~The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

I read Milne’s early attempt at a murder mystery last week, and I thought it was a creditable try. Dame Agatha Christie and the rest of the more famous early twentieth century “Golden Age” mystery writers were better, but Milne could have gone on to improve his skills in the genre if he had written more mysteries. Alas, Red House was Milne’s only mystery novel.

If you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Hereâ€™s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesnâ€™t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

YA Historical Fiction–12th and 13th Centuries

Jul1

I read two YA historical fiction novels set in medieval times this week–very different places, however.

The Queen’s Daughter by Susan Coventry. Joan of England, the youngest child of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, is transplanted from Poitiers to Sicily to the Holy Land back to Poitiers and finally to Toulouse. The fictionalized biography of Joan takes as its theme her struggle to choose between her parents’, especially her mother’s, advice to trust no one, certainly no man, and Joan’s own inclination to love and be loved. I enjoyed the story of this princess caught in the middle of the marital and political skirmishes of her parents and her pugnacious older brothers, and although the novel is mostly imagined since very little verifiable information about Joan’s life exists, it was believable, if perhaps a bit romantic. There’s also some odd speculation about Joan’s (married) love life, but it’s OK for older teens. Anyway, don’t we all want to believe that the princess lives happily ever after with the love of her life, after maybe some suffering and difficulty? That’s what happens in this version of Joan’s story, and it makes a for a satisfying read. Joan lived from 1165-1199 in medieval Europe.

Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang. There are probably several novels that take the adventures of Marco Polo as a starting point, but this one is different because it’s told from the vantage point of the fictional sixteen year old granddaughter of the Great Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler of China in the 13th century. Emmajin scorns the idea of becoming a dutiful wife and wants only to use her skill with a bow and her horsemanship to serve the Great Khan, her grandfather, in battle. However, when she is assigned to prove her loyalty by spying on the Westerners, Marco Polo,his father and his uncle, Emmajin becomes more and more confused about who she is and what she really wants out of life.

Reading this book was like entering another world, like the mind-bending worlds that fantasy and futuristic authors create, only this one was a real historical place and time. I knew very little about Mongol culture and customs when I started the book, and I felt as if by the time I finished I at least had an introduction to the world of Kublai Khan and his court. Emmajin is an admirable and strong character, and her romance-from-afar with Marco Polo is handled deftly and tastefully. Emajin also changes over the course of the book from an immature tomboyish adventurer to a young woman with strength and purpose. There are so many bookish, refined females in historical fiction; it was refreshing to read about an intelligent girl heroine who loves to fight and ride horses and compete for prizes. And she learns to channel that strength and competitiveness into pursuits that will make a real improvement in her world.

Daughter of Xanadu was nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category.

More YA historicals set during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries:
The Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters are not Young Adult, but older teens and young people would enjoy them immensely. They are murder mysteries set between about 1135 and about 1145, during the contest for the crown of England between King Stephen and Empress Maud.
Spider’s Voice by Gloria Skurzynski. Heloise and Abelard, the famous French lovers, as seen from the viewpoint of a trusted servant, Spider. 12th century.
De Granville trilogy (Blood Red Horse, Green Jasper, and Blade of Silver) by K.M. Grant. Two young men fight in the armies of Saladin and of Richard the Lion-hearted during and after the Third Crusade. 12th Century.
The Youngest Templar series (Keeper of the Grail, Trail of Fate, Orphan of Destiny) by Michael Spradlin. Cliffhanger warning: be sure to read these together because the first book, at least, ends at a rather inopportune and unsatisfying moment. An orphan boy goes to the Third Crusade, makes friends, discovers his heritage, and returns to England along with his companions, the archer Robard Hode and maid Maryam. (Get it? R.H and Maid M.?)
Knight Crusader by Ronald Welch. Third crusade again. 12th century.
The Single Shard by Linda Sue Park. Newbery Award winning story of a Korean orphan boy who wants to become a potter. Tree-Ear, named for a wild mushroom that grows without seed, lives under a bridge with his friend and mentor, Crane-man, but he has a dream of becoming an artisan. Late 12th century.
Hawksmaid: The Untold Story of Robin Hood and Maid Marian by Kathryn Lasky. Early 13th century during the reign of King John.
Perfect Fire trilogy (Blue Flame, White Heat, and Paradise Red) by K.M. Grant. The Catholic crusade against the Cathars in southern France (Occitania). Raimon and Yolanda fall in love during a time of religious conflict and danger for their country. 13th century.
The Kite Rider by Geraldine McCaughrean. Twelve year old Haoyou must protect his family after the death of his father in 13th century China.
I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade by Diane L. WIlson. Oyuna wants to become a great horsewoman, but when Kublai Khan’s soldiers raid her village and take all the horses, she disguises herself as a boy to remain with the herd.
Sisters of the Sword by Maya Snow. Two sisters, Kimi and Hana, run away from a tragedy in their aristocratic home and take refuge, disguised as boys, in the dojo of Master Goku who runs the finest samurai training school in Japan. Semicolon review here. 13th century.
The Ramsay Scallop by Frances Temple. Elenor and Thomas go on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James before their arranged marriage can take place. End of the 13th century (1299).

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, chapter 7: Queer Lodgings

Jun30

In which we are introduced to a rather alarming character named Beorn.

The name Beorn is actually an Old English word for “man” or “warrior” but it originally meant “bear.” Beorn, the next helper that Bilbo and the dwarves find, is a man/bear. Gandalf calls hims a “skin-changer.”

“At any rate he is under no enchantment but his own. He lives in an oak-wood and has a great wooden house; and as a man he keeps cattle and horses which are nearly as marvellous as himself. They work for him and talk to him. He does not eat them; neither does he hunt or eat wild animals. He keeps hives and hives of great fierce bees, and lives most on cream and honey. As a bear he ranges far and wide. I once saw him sitting all alone on the top of the Carrock at night watching the moon sinking towards the Misty Mountains, and I heard him growl in the tongue of bears: ‘The day will come when they will perish and I shall go back!’ That is why I believe he once came from the mountains himself.”

Shapeshifting, according to Wikipedia, is a common theme in folk tales and mythology. Sometimes voluntary (as with Beorn) and at other times inflicted upon an unwilling subject by a sorcerer or god (Beauty and the Beast), shapeshifting from man, or woman, to animal gives the shifter both new abilities and new limitations. With Beorn, the advantages of being a bear are emphasized: he can travel far and rapidly in his bear-shape and defeat powerful enemies like the Wargs and the goblins. Gandalf seems to think that the visit to Beorn’s house is both perilous and necessary. Z-baby says that Beorn is a “creepy” character. She said, “What if he got mad and decided to turn into a bear and eat them?” I guess that’s the danger you run when you’re dealing with a bear-man.

Beorn can and does help the dwarves and Bilbo, but he can also be a bad enemy if he is annoyed or crossed.

“A goblin’s head was nailed to a tree just outside the ate and a warg-skin was nailed to a tree just beyond. Beorn was a fierce enemy. But now he was their friend, and Gandalf thought it wise to tell him their whole story and the reason of their journey, so that they could get the most help he could offer.”

At the end of this chapter, Gandalf goes off to other business, leaving the dwarves and Bilbo to enter the forest of Mirkwood by themselves. As he is leaving, Gandalf mentions, in an off-hand way, the Necromancer, an early incarnation of Sauron, the powerful satanic villain of The Lord of the Rings. The enemy that Bilbo and his companions have to deal with, eventually, in The Hobbit is the dragon Smaug, but first they must face the perils of Mirkwood.

A biographical sketch of Beorn.

YA Dystopian Fiction Trilogies

Jun29

First, some definitions.

dystopia: an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or an environmentally degraded society. The opposite of utopia.

trilogy: a group of three related novels, plays, films, operas, or albums.

Young adult fiction is abounding in dystopian fiction trilogies these days. Why dystopias? Maybe it has something to with the question I ask myself when I’m worried about the success of a huge project I’ve undertaken, “What’s the worst thing that could happen if I fail?” Usually, the answer is comforting. Things could be worse than they are now, and even if the whole project fails, life will go on. Dystopian fiction is like that: you think our society/government/legal system/moral climate is going to hell in a handbasket? Just read about X in this great new book. Things could be much worse, and still there’s hope, usually, in the young adult dystopian novels at least.

Why trilogies? Well, I’m tempted to say that the publishers want to sell three books instead of just one, that the story in these books could often be edited down to one chunky novel. However, that’s not always the case. There’s something about the three-book series that lends itself to the introduction, climax, ending resolution arc of a grand story. The one thing I know about this trend is that it frustrates readers who often get involved in the first volume of a projected trilogy or series only to find out that the next book hasn’t even been written yet and won’t be published until next year.

Oh, well. If you’re a fan of these dystopian fiction trilogies, here’s an annotated list of the ones I’ve read or heard about and can recommend:

The Giver, Gathering Blue, and Messenger by Lois Lowry. The Giver won a Newbery Medal. My review is here. The three books set in this futuristic seeming utopia are related, but not a proper trilogy that continues from one book to the next.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. The first one is great, quite absorbing (Semicolon review of The Hunger Games here). The second book in the trilogy is an OK follow-up, and the third book is riveting and quite violent. Here’s my review of Mockingjay with notes on spiritual lessons I found while reading.

The Declaration, The Resistance, and The Legacy by Gemma Malley. If the chance to live forever came with a price, would you opt in or out? Semicolon review of The Declaration.

Uglies, Pretties, and Specials by Scott Westerfield. “Uglies is set in a world in which everyone has an operation when they turn sixteen, making them supermodel beautiful. Big eyes, full lips, no one fat or skinny.” I haven’t read this series, but I’ve heard good things about it.

The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, and The Death Cure by James Dashner. My rant about The Maze Runner and unfinished series books that leave me twisting in the wind. I haven’t read the second and third books in this trilogy.

The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1), The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2), and Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3) by Patrick Ness. In Prentisstown everyone can hear the thoughts of all the men in town, a situation that makes for a lot of Noise and not much privacy. These books should be read together, if at all. They’re all one story, and they should have a violence warning attached.

Unfinished series:
The Roar by Emma Clayton. Semicolon review here. I’m not sure this one is meant to be a trilogy, but it does have a sequel called The Whisper, to be published sometime later this year, 2011? Wait for the sequel because this story of mutant twins living in a totalitarian state behind The Wall is absorbing and thought-provoking, but unfinished. The ending is not an ending at all, but rather a set-up for the second half (or third).

Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Lena lives in a managed society where everyone gets an operation when they turn eighteen that cures them of “delirium,” the passion and pain of falling in love. Sequels will be Pandemonium (2012) and Requiem (2013).

Matched by Ally Condie. There’s not so much action and adventure in this book, but more romance and thoughtful commentary on the pros and cons of a “safe” society bought with the price of complete obedience to an authoritarian government. Second book, Crossed, will be out November 1, 2011.

Divergent by Veronica Roth. This one is satisfying as a stand-alone, but the second book in the series, Resurgent, will be out next year, 2012.

Saturday Review of Books: June 25, 2011

Jun24

“Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.”~George Orwell

Mr. Orwell, author of the classic novels 1984 and Animal Farm, in addition to several volumes of essays and nonfiction, was born on June 25, 1903. He eventually added the following ideas and terms to our collective wisdom:

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

Big Brother is watching you.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in oneâ€™s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.

1. Beckie@ByTheBook (The Confessions of Catherine de Medici)
2. Beckie@ByTheBook (Darkness Follows)
3. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (The Penderwicks at Point Mouette)
4. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (All of Baby, Nose to Toes)
5. Amy Reads (On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe)
6. Amy Reads (Rape New York by Jana Leo)
7. Amy Reads (Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis)
8. Diary of an Eccentric (War & Watermelon)
9. Diary of an Eccentric (Forgetting English)
10. Diary of an Eccentric (Mr. Darcy Goes Overboard)
11. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Neffenegger
12. Becky (Tombstones and Banana Trees)
13. Becky (Mirror Ball)
14. Becky (Pompeii City on Fire)
15. Becky (Saint Training)
16. Becky (Hooray for Amanda and Her Alligator by Mo Willems)
17. Becky (If Rocks Could Sing)
18. Becky (Squish Super Amoeba)
19. Becky (Babymouse Mad Scientist)
20. Becky (Press Here)
21. Becky (Back to School With Betsy)

22. Laura (The Secret Knowledge by David Mamet)
23. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (The Ranger)
24. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Mostly Harmless)
25. Collateral Bloggage (Final Jeopardy)
26. Glynn (Nightmare)
27. Cindy Swanson (The Private Patient)
28. FleurFisher (22 Britannia Road)
29. FleurFisher (The Best of Everything)
30. FleurFisher (Poker Face)
31. europeanne (3 books)
32. Graham @ My Book Year (A Visit from the Goon Squad)
33. Janet (The Westing Game)
34. Brooke (The Red Queen)
35. Brooke (The Dawn of Illumination)
36. Brooke (Beastly)
37. jama’s alphabet soup (Sarah Emma Edmonds Was a Great Pretender)
38. jama’s alphabet soup (Vegetable Picture Boosk)
39. DebD (In Siberia)
40. Word Lily (False Witness)
41. Alice@Supratentorial(The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)
42. SmallWorld Reads (The Postmistress)

43. MK {Abomination & Barbie Dolls}
44. Hope (more on WWII Diary)
45. Bluerose’s Heart(Hourglass)
46. A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust (Divergent)
47. BookBelle (Rain Village)
48. Becky (Nemesis by Agatha Christie)
49. Becky (Small acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan)
50. Becky (William’s Midsummer Dreams by Zilpha Keatley Snyder)
51. Becky (Miles from Ordinary)
52. Becky (Front and Center)
53. Becky (Rumpelstiltskin Problem)
54. Becky (Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic)
55. Summer @ The Brothers H (The Hunger Games)
56. bekahcubed (Firegirl)
57. Brandy @ Afterthoughts (Poetic Knowledge)
58. dawn (A Mother’s Rule of Life)
59. Becky (Am I Really a Christian?)
60. Marijo Taverne
61. Yvann @ Reading, Fuelled By Tea (Snapshot)
62. SenoraG (Peter and the Vampires)
63. Gina @ Bookscount(Joe is Online)

Missionary Fiction

Jun23

In an episode of what Madame Mental Multivitamin calls synchronicity/serendipity/synthesis, I read two works of fiction this week based on the lives of the authors’ missionary grandparents. I’ve also been thinking a lot about sending two “missionaries” from my own home to Slovakia in a couple of weeks and about my mother and my father-in-law and the legacy of faith they have given to me and to my family.

The first book, The Moon in the Mango Tree by Pamela Binnings Ewen, was just O.K. The writing quality is somewhat uneven, and the characters sometimes enigmatic. The story opens in 1916 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, when Barbara (Babs), a schoolgirl and aspiring opera singer, meets Harvey Perkins, a young medical student. As the two grow together, get married, and then endure being parted while Harvey serves in the military in France during The Great War, Barbara learns that she must subordinate her choices to those of her loving but firm-minded husband. The couple go to Thailand to serve as medical missionaries, even though Barbara must give up her hopes for a career in opera and even her enjoyment of classical music itself to live in a remote mission outpost in Northern Thailand. Of course, with such different outlooks and goals in life and with what I suppose was a typical (?) early twentieth century lack of communication in the marriage, trouble is bound to ensue. And it does.

Besides the fact that the characters’ motivations were sometimes obscure, I guess what I disliked about the story was that neither Harvey nor Barbara seemed to have much of a faith in God to lose. They do lose their faith, both of them, in the face of suffering and hardship in Thailand. But I couldn’t figure out whether they believed in anything much in the first place, other than themselves and their own ability to “be a team” and improve the physical lives of the Thai villagers. The book was good, but not great, although I liked the ending and the ideas about the legacy we leave as a result of the choices we make.

The second book I read had the same basic premise as the first: a young couple goes to the mission field, China this time, in the early twentieth century. However, City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell made me cry. It’s very, very difficult to write a book about Good People, about heroes and heroines, without making them larger than life, unapproachable, and unrelatable. (The dictionary says “unrelatable” isn’t a word, but it should be, and I’m going to use it anyway.) Will and Katherine Kiehn are ordinary, fallible people, and yet they are heroes. They go to China as young, untested volunteers with only their calling and their faith in God’s love and mercy to sustain them, and they survive disease and poverty and famine and family tragedy and war and persecution. Each of the two has a “crisis of faith”, maybe even more than one, but they manage to hold onto the the God who is always holding on to them, even when doubt and fear threaten to overwhelm. The story is told in first person from Will’s point of view, interspersed with excerpts from Katherine’s sporadically kept journal. The whole novel is just golden.

As a reviewer, I feel as if I ought to be able to tell you how Ms. Caldwell was able to write such a true story about people that I believe in as much as I believe in my own parents and grandparents, but I can’t. The humility and the honesty displayed in the characters of both Katherine and Will inspire imitation. I wanted to sit beside an elderly Will Kiehn, listen to his stories of China, and absorb some of his wisdom and his indomitable meekness.

City of Tranquil Light is one of the best fictional accounts of missionary life I’ve ever read. It ranks right up there with Elisabeth Elliot’s No Graven Image, a book I mentioned (and recommended) here. City of Tranquil Light has the added advantage of painting a wonderful picture of a committed, growing marriage.

Can you tell I really, really liked this book? I happened to pick it up from the library and read it because it’s one of the books on the long list of nominations for the 2011 INSPY Awards. Thanks to whomever nominated this book. If all the nominated books are as good as this one, the judges will have an impossible job.