If you are looking for your next cookie cutter historical Christian romance novel, this is NOT it. You want the formula, the big-name publisher-approved, the perfectly polished, the predictable — well, there’s plenty out there for you to choose from. But this … this is the raw, authentic depiction of faith in a harsh world during a harsh time. It shows the full picture of faith — the struggle to find it and the strength gained from it. It’s a beautiful story of love, bravery, and facing the unknown.

The characters start out broken, they heal a little, they break further, they endure. So my three words for this novel …

Authentic

You can feel the author’s love for this story, this place and time and the world and, most of all, her faith in each and every page.

Endearing

I feel like these characters we are meant to see the broken parts of ourselves reflected in these characters. This made them all the more dear to me.

Scenic

Set in Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s, the setting of this book is a character in and of itself —both vivd and exciting. You can tell a lot of time and effort went into researching the time and place, as well as the cultures of the characters.

The cookie cutter stories have officially lost me as an audience for at least a while. They are like eating the same processed food again and again. I’d rather have something someone made in their own kitchen with love — and that they’ve welcomed me into their home to share.