Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers is about a young woman named Angel a soiled dove in California's gold country in the 1850's.  The term soiled dove, for those who are unfamiliar with the seedy side of history, is another name for prostitute.  This book is supposed to be more modern take/version of the Hosea story but from the viewpoint of Angel the soiled dove.   Angel is a young woman who has been abused in every way by people in her life until a man named Michael is told by God to marry her.  This is her story of the battle of her learning to trust others and most importantly to trust God.

I admit there where parts of this story that where a little to detailed so its not one for a young girl.  I did not think I would enjoy this book but the forgiveness shown is very powerful.  However it does talk about some very touchy subjects such as child sex abuse (which caught me off guard as most try to gloss over that it happened even in the past), sex trafficking, and mental abuse.  I have to admit it was a hard read because of those issues but it did make any of those issues seem great or positive which I have seen even in so called "Christian" novels.  I would still recommend it however it may trigger bad memories for someone who has come out of that type of past so please read with caution.

Sometimes as Christian we forget not everyone who is a believer has come from a nice or easy life so we can't expect every book about someone becoming a believer to be that sweet nicety life.  We need to remember Christ has come for all and not just those who have a goody goody type of past.  Also we need to remember the bible is not exactly PG itself.  This book really shows the struggle of someone that has been horribly treated by the world and see how God raises her up. Francine Rivers is a very talented author to be able to show us God's redeeming love no matter where a person comes from.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review and was not required to give a positive review.