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16.  Redeeming Love

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Adrienne Bulinski

Author:  Francine Rivers

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Christian, Romance

Info:  465 pages, published May 9, 2005

Format:  Book

Summary 

Redeeming Love a historical romance novel set in the 1850s Gold Rush in California.  The story is inspired by the Book of Hosea from the Bible.  Its central theme is the redeeming love of God towards sinners. Angel, the main character, is abandoned by her father and sold to a house of prostitution after her mother dies.  Angel hardens herself to survive and expects nothing from men but betrayal.  When she meets Michael Hosea, Angel’s life begins to change.   Michael obeys God’s call to marry Angel and to love her unconditionally. Slowly, day by day, he defies Angel’s every bitter expectation, until despite her resistance, her frozen heart begins to thaw.  

 

Quotes

“Love is the way back into Eden. It is the way back to life.”

“If you love me as you claim to, then you love her as well. She’s part of me. Do you understand? She’s part of my flesh and my life. When you say things against her, you say them against me. When you cut her, you cut me. Do you understand?”

“All the way back, she had imagined him gloating and taunting, rubbing her face in her own broken pride. Instead, he knelt before her and washed her dirty, blistered feet. Throat burning, she looked down at his dark head and struggled with the feelings rising in her. She waited for them to die away, but they wouldn’t.”

“He was never angry when she made mistakes. He complimented and encouraged her. He shared his own mishaps with a sense of humor that made her less annoyed with her own incompetence. He gave her hope that she could learn, and pride when she did.”

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14. The Language of Flowers

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Deidre Farrell

Author:  Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Genre:  Fiction, Romance

Info:  323 pages, published August 23, 2011

Format:  Book

Summary 

The Language of Flowers follows the fraught life of a Victoria Jones, who by the age of 18, had lived in 32 foster homes, and becomes a flower arranger.  Victoria learns the human lessons of love and trust with the aid of a flower dictionary, a type of Victorian-era book which defines what different types of flowers mean.

 

Quotes

“If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.”

“Common thistle is everywhere,” she said. “Which is perhaps why human beings are so relentlessly unkind to one another.”

“She was perfect. I knew this the moment she emerged from my body, white and wet and wailing. Beyond the requisite ten fingers and ten toes, the beating heart, the lungs inhaling and exhaling oxygen, my daughter knew how to scream. She knew how to make herself heard. She knew how to reach out and latch on. She knew what she needed to do to survive. I didn’t know how it was possible that such perfection could have developed within a body as flawed as my own, but when I looked into her face, I saw that it clearly was.”

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