By Meg Moseley
Miranda is a widow with six children who is trapped in a toxic church.
Jack is the estranged half-brother of Miranda’s dead husband.
When Miranda’s pastor announces that the church is moving to a new county, she begins making plans to remove her family from the clutches of corrupt leadership. The first step is changing the guardianship of her children from members of the church to someone outside of it. She picks Jack.
However, when a fall makes her incapable of caring for her kids and Jack arrives to take over, things start moving out of her control.
I have to admit, I liked this book. A lot. Moseley’s style of writing is crisp and clear with just enough hint of poetry to make me smile.
“Water, water, everywhere. The stuff of miracles. Water, walked on. Turned to wine. An ark tossed about on it.
Water and earth made mud. Mud to heal a blind man’s eyes.
Earth to entomb a man, and the voice of God to call him out.” Pg. 363
There are many wonderful points to this book. The charming personalities of the six kids. The sweet romantic spark. The hint of mystery. The carefully woven story line. All excellent.
I do have one little thing to complain about though. (I hate complaining about well written books…but, here goes…) Jack is divorced. And that bothers me.
Now, I figure part of the reason the author did that was to give him depth and give him a sense of realness. Lots of men today are divorced. And that’s fine.
However! My irritation with it? This book takes a deep look at legalism. There are things said about wearing dresses and not using microwaves, having long hair, not reading fiction and not using birth control.
And those things are all just that… things. People may find “biblical” backing for them but for the truth is that nothing in scripture DIRECTLY speaks to those things. (For example: women are told to dress modestly and not dress like men. They are not instructed on the length or style of clothing.)
Divorce, on the other hand, is spoken directly to. It bothers me that it seemed to be grouped together with all those other things. It’s different.
That said, let me tell you a secret: I don’t know exactly where I stand on the whole divorce/remarriage issue. It is one of those things that hit a bit close to home as I have a sister-in-law who is divorced and re-married to my brother.
Still, while I don’t know exactly where I stand on it, I know it’s an issue. So, as I was reading When Sparrows Fall the fact that he was divorced and that wasn’t a big deal really irritated me.
It was fine to have that be part of the story. I just wanted her to show the conflict with it… and she didn’t.
In the end though, my conclusion is the same: It’s a well written book worth reading.
This book was sent to me for review purposes from Multnomah Publishers. I received the book in exchange for my honest review.
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