Novels Now

Lynn Austin
428 pages

The circumstances of life have dealt a tough blow to the Carlson sisters. First, their beloved mother dies. Next, their father dies under circumstances that ruin life for them in their Swedish village. Their uncle and his family come to live with them but rather than helping the situation it only creates new problems as their brother Nils, unable to get along with their uncle, abandons both the family farm and his sisters. The girls want to hold on to their only home but oldest sister Elin carries a dark secret. She decides that the only thing she can do to escape the stigma they carry in the village is to escape to America. So she writes to her mother’s favorite brother who lives in Chicago and asks him the help arrange for their passage. He obliges but once the sisters arrive in America they find that their new beginning is filled with hard work and deprivation. All the girls want is to feel loved and to have a home of their own but they have many miles to go and many lessons to learn before they will find one.

One of the things that makes Lynn Austin one of my favorite authors is her ability to write characters whose lives mirror real life no matter what time period she is writing from. This book takes place in the late 1800’s but you still find flawed characters dealing with issues that still plague us. Hunger, poverty, neglect, poor choices, etc.

She also has the ability to present the message of Christ without making it feel forced. It flows with the circumstances in the lives of the characters and like it would in real life. The characters in this story are not happy-go-lucky. They are angry with God for their circumstances and His apparent lack of care for their pain and we are present as they work their way through their grief.

My one complaint would be that I felt like the dialogue was strained in a few places. I still enjoyed this one a lot though and I would recommend it to readers of Christian Fiction and Historical Fiction. (4/5)