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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Gives Christian Fiction a Bad Name, March 2, 2010
While this review is talking about this book specifically, the points I make aren't directed at Al Lacy exclusively. Most of these issues are common faults found with the bulk of "Christian" fiction.
I received a review copy of Faithful Heart from Multnomah. I thought it sounded like an interesting book, set in the western US in the 1870s. There's basically two storylines following two sisters: one who is making a trek west via wagon train and the other who is struggling being married to a man dealing with violent mental issues related to his Civil War service.
Al Lacy's not a bad writer necessarily, but this book is a great example of Christian fiction gone bad. While Lacy does try to tackle a real-life issue (mental illness) and I commend him for that, he goes about it all wrong.
First, the treatment of mental illness in this book is thoroughly modern. In no way could I picture the discussions happening here happening in in the 1870s, and not just because he used language like "shell shock" that doesn't come about for almost another 50 years. It was like he put a late-20th century story in more attractive clothes to entice more readers.
Secondly, this book is chock full with church-y language. The conversations between characters come off as untrue to real life, like a play written by an amateur (me, for instance). Like most Christians who've been around the church a lot I'm guilty of this as well, but it does make me cringe. There is a way to write a story from a biblical worldview without making it sound like it was written in a Sunday School. The God of the Bible is so much more than that.
My last major issue with this book is that everything is tied up in a neat bow. While that might be the way we would like things, real life doesn't work that way and we fool ourselves when we place hope that it will. Mental illness is messy. Even more so, our sin nature is (which we rarely see in this book aside from the "bad" guys).
To be fair, this was originally published 25 years ago. Perhaps Lacy wouldn't have written the book this way if he wrote it today. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this matter.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Faithful Heart, March 1, 2010
I have read books by Al Lacy before. I have also read a couple of books with the main characters of this book. The books are in another series called the Stranger series.
This book has a helpful Prologue, so if you haven't read any books in that series, or Book One of this series, it catches you up to speed.
This book is very action packed. I did find parts of this book a tad violet. The violence was part of a story line, not just violence thrown in for the sake of having violence. One of the characters is a Civil War veteran, who is suffering from shell shock.
I did like this book, in spite of the violence, and will be looking for Book One in this series, as well as additional books in the series.
This book was provided by WaterBrook Multnomah for me to review.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Historical inaccuracies, February 25, 2010
I had a very difficult time with the historical (in)accuracies of this novel. Yes, it is historical fiction, but I expect even fiction to be more historically accurate than this. The main problem lies in the medical terminology used in this book--and there is a lot of medical discussion because Breanna is a nurse and Dottie's husband Jerrod is suffering from psychological problems caused by his experiences in the Civil War. Unfortunately, although the author has done a lot of research on medical conditions and treatments, they don't always mesh with the time period. "Shell shock" is mentioned throughout the book as being the cause of Jerrod's problems. But the term "shell shock" was not adopted to refer to this problem until World War I--in the Civil War era it was called "soldier's heart" or "combat fatigue". After this, I found myself checking on other medical details in the book that seemed too modern to fit the time period. The other obvious (to me) inaccuracy happens when Breanna ties on a surgeon's mask. Surgeon's masks were not really adopted until after 1899, when the droplet theory of infection was developed. Are these important parts of the story? Perhaps. But they are inaccurate enough to bother me throughout the book.
Perhaps these inaccuracies will not bother other readers as much as they bother me. But the story in general just didn't grab me either. At times the romance between John Stranger and Breanna was a bit sappy (this is personal opinion, others might not see it that way). It also took a really long time for Breanna's story to intersect with Dottie's story. And I just could not identify with Dottie. She took way too long to take her children out of an extremely dangerous situation, because she was too concerned about Jerrod's psychological and emotional welfare. I could understand her reasoning if she had been afraid he would kill them if they left, but her reasoning was always that she was afraid it would destroy Jerrod's emotional/psychological healing and she wanted to help him get better. The violence done to the children in the book sickened me, and made me angry that this character would put herself and her children in such a position.
The ending has a frightening climax and struck me as an awfully convenient way to get Dottie out of her marriage and move her on to a new relationship. I just didn't like this book much at all. There was one portion of the story in which Dottie and Jerrod's doctor discuss the reasons why God does not always heal faithful Christians who ask Him for healing that I thought was really explained well. I did enjoy parts of the book, but the weak points were hard to power through.
I think I was probably also at a disadvantage because I didn't read the first book of this series (Angel of Mercy) or the other series that is related to Breanna's love interest, John Stranger (Journeys of the Stranger). I definitely felt like there was a big backstory that I had missed, so readers would be better off starting at the beginning of this series. Ultimately, I don't recommend this book unless you are an Al Lacy fan.
**This book was provided for review by the publisher, Waterbrook Multnomah.
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