TROUBLED WATERS BY RENE GUTTERIDGE

TROUBLED WATERS by RENE GUTTERIDGE is a book about relationships, forgiveness and restoration.
Macille (Macey) Steigel is a successful news anchor, with the chance of getting into television broadcasting in New York, but she is neither happy nor fulfilled.  Her inability to sustain relationships is largely caused by a secret which keeps her tied to her past.
She was brought up by loving Christian parents on a farm in a small tight-knit community.  Her father, a godly man and a deacon in the church, had very strict rules about right and wrong, and, when she overstepped the mark, he reacted in anger and condemnation.  Macey is devastated by this rejection and leaves home at seventeen to make a new life for herself.  She turns away from the faith of her youth as she failed to see love and forgiveness in her father, the man who she wanted to please above all and by whom she had always felt loved and accepted until she failed to meet his standards, and wants nothing to do with God if He is anything like her father!
Her feelings are conflicted when she gets a message that her father has died, but she goes back to her childhood home for the funeral to be with her mother, Evelyn.
Evelyn has been praying for years that her husband and daughter will be reconciled, for she knows things that Macey has never known, and is angry that her prayers are unanswered.  However, her joy at seeing Macey again and the loving support and wise counsel of her friend Patricia, who had nursed her husband Jess until he died, make her realize that the Lord is indeed in control and His ways are not our ways.
Noah and his twin girls, with their unashamed love for the Lord and their desire that all should  come to know Him, have a lot to do with her restoration.  
It is a sensitively and beautifully written novel with believable characters. We learn a great deal about human nature and the importance of not trying to make things better in our own strength, which often makes things worse, and also of not being quick in jumping to conclusions.
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WITH EVERY LETTER BY SARAH SUNDIN

WITH EVERY LETTER by SARAH SUNDIN is the first book in her WINGS OF THE NIGHTINGALE series. The novel is set in 1942 during the second world war, mostly in North Africa.
Philomela Blake (whose name means "nightingale") has spent a great deal of her life in the jungle with her botanist father, and has always been a bit of a misfit due to her unusual looks and desperate shyness. Her mother, who died in a car accident when she was two years old, was half Filipino, which accounts for her rather exotic looks. She has a large mouth and is afraid to smile because of the cruelty of her classmates who say she looks like a monkey when she smiles, and she has never cut her hair, which she wears plaited in coils around her head. Her father says she is a rare orchid. She is afraid that if she cuts her hair she will end up like her mother, who became a party animal after cutting her hair and neglected her husband and daughter.
Mellie, as she is called by her father with whom she is very close, and later by the nurses in the army air force, has a real problem making friends. She has a scrapbook with photos she has cut out of magazines, and these are her "friends". Some are photos of real people who have terrible problems, one of whom is Tom MacGilliver whose father was executed for murder when Tom was seven, and Mellie prays for him and others who are suffering in various ways. She has a compassionate heart, is a caring and efficient nurse, and does all she can to help her patients, often singing to them with her beautiful voice. Her father calls her an angel of mercy. Being friendly comes easily to her in a hospital ward, but in she is hopeless at social functions. She has no self image and doesn't see how beautiful she really is when she looks in the mirror. She cuts her hair when it becomes hard to manage in North Africa, and realizes that cutting her hair will not make her like her mother! She is a person in her own right and is responsible before the Lord for her own actions and not her mother's or anyone else's.
She is transferred from the Walter Reed Memorial Hospital to the air evacuation unit at Bowman Field. We see how hard she tries to make friends, as her job depends on it, and the mistakes she makes along the way. She becomes involved in anonymous letter writing, and finds that she can really be herself in this kind of relationship.
Tom MacGilliver is her anonymous correspondent. He can also be himself in such a situation. He has a lot to live down being the son of a murderer, but he will not take the easy way out and change his name. He has some happy memories of his father before he became a drunkard. Tom smiles a lot and is determined not to be seen as a killer. He finds it hard making friends and finds leadership hard. He befriends a dog in the war torn country and lavishes affection on him. He calls him Sesame, and when Mellie sees him with the dog she knows he is her secret correspondant. He is an engineer and wants to build bridges between people, not kill them. He nearly gets his sergeant, Larry Fong, who is his only real friend in the platoon, killed, because he doesn't shoot an enemy sniper when he has the chance. He is a strong Christian and tries to do the right thing in every situation. Both Mellie and Tom have let friends down, been the target of cruel attacks and have been betrayed by those they thought they could trust.
The relationship between Mellie (Annie) and Tom (Ernest) flourishes as they can really open up to one another. They become really good friends and eventually fall in love. Will Mellie, who knows Tom's identity, take the chance of revealing her own identity to him and risk being hurt if he is repulsed by her looks? She feels she owes it to him and is being selfish putting her own fear of being hurt before his feelings.
This novel has a really good message and I can highly recommend it. I am looking forward to the next novel in the series.




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THE BREAKING POINT BY KAREN BALL

I have just reread THE BREAKING POINT by KAREN BALL and can highly recommend it. It is a story about family relationships and marriage. We see how God's amazing mercy and grace can restore, not only a broken marriage, but also broken people.
Renee and Gabe grow up in completely different families. Renee's parents are godly people who love each other, their family is very close, and her childhood is wonderfully happy. She feels secure in her parents' love for her. Her parents's marriage becomes an idol in her life, and she is frustrated with Gabe who is not at all like her father. She tries her hardest to change him.
Gabe's father was an angry and violent man, and there was no peace in their home. Gabe was afraid of his father until one day he became angry and hit him back, Even though he still was beaten on a regular basis, he made anger his friend and was no longer afraid. Gabe was also good at acting as if everything was fine. This became his way of life, and after he miraculously survived a fall down a cliff, he became active in church to fulfill a vow he had made to God. He was good at preaching, as he used his acting ability to help him. He didn't realize the Lord hadn't called him to ministry until his seminary professor helped him see the truth.
Renee and Gabe's marriage starts off on the wrong foot and goes downhill very fast. They go through years of counseling and are greatly helped by Grace and Oren, an elderly couple who belong to their Bible study group.
Renee, Gabe and their Siberian husky, Bo, are stranded in a snow storm after being away for a few days in the mountains. This is where everything comes to a head. They roll down a bank, Gabe is injured and unconscious and Renee is afraid he will die if she doesn't go for help. He wakes up when she has gone and is scared that she is lost and that he will never see her again. We see how they both turn to the Lord in this crisis and how He answers their prayers and how He uses this time to show them the truth about themselves. There is no room for blaming one another for their predicament, nor is their room for play acting.
Renee sees how critical she has become and realizes that she and Gabe are not her mother and father but that they are very different, and Gabe sees how he has hurt Renee by not appreciating her love for him. He has never felt good enough because of his father's physical and verbal abuse, and learnt to
protect his heart by playing a part instead of being himself. He sees how he has pushed Renee away with his outbursts of anger.
We see how a couple can be restored to one another if they are determined not to give up on one another, if they follow godly counsel and ask the Lord to change them rather than trying to change their partner.
This is a story of forgiveness, faith and redemption and is full of scriptural truth.





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