Customer Reviews

Redemption

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In 1524 England, twelve-year-old Lily hasn't felt warm since the baron's men dragged her father away eight months ago. She pictures him dead. However, Frere Lanther, who has come from the Rhineland to lead his own secret and forbidden church, suggests Lily's father may well be alive in the New World. The baron is forcing Lily and her mother to leave their home, which he owns. When Lily begs her mother to accompany her to the New World to find her father, her mother reluctantly agrees.

The voyage is miserably cramped and filthy. A live pig lives in the room where the poor passengers eat their meals of watery soup and insect-ridden black bread. Lily meets the baron's son, Ethan, onboard and inadvertently blurts that Frere Lanther lives with them. When Lily's mother is raped, Lily is heartsick. She knows her mother's punishment was a direct result of Lily's exposing her family's secret.

A shipwreck upon the shores of the New World ends the voyage. The castaways stumble upon a gruesome discovery, which increases Lily's fear that her father is dead. When her mother is kidnapped, Lily must set off alone through the forest, starving and terrified. What she finds in the forest is astonishing.

Multilayered REDEMPTION is truly unique. Lily's story is a harrowing physical and spiritual quest laden with mystery, filled with unexpected plot twists. The tale is harsh, violent and gruesome --- not for anyone wanting to view history through a rosy haze. Yet the book is also vibrant, riveting and beautifully written. Lily herself is a believable, sympathetic character surviving devastation after devastation.

If you love history, you'll enjoy this powerful piece of historical fiction. If you snoozed through history class (as I did), you'll love REDEMPTION for a fascinating read that may even turn you --- yes, YOU! --- into a history buff.

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Reading Redemption offers up a view of colonial life that you can't find in history books. By looking at the passage of early colonailists through the eyes of a young peasant girl, Julie Chibbaro is able to focus on common language and every fair and foul sense that would been a part of real life of real people, not just the gentry and the history makers. Though fictionalized, the story has a ripped-from-the-day's-headlines feel that is accomplished through knowledge of the period by reseach into both European and native American experiences of the period.

Rarely am I brought into a book, as I am with Redemption. Normally I'm an observer in the books I read, but with Julie's writing style, I was there living Lily's life. There was enough detail so that I could visualize everything, but not so much that I couldn't put my own sense of life into it. I didn't want it to end. This is a sign that I loved it and wanted to read more.

This book is beautifully written and appropriate for every age--from young adult to old adult. A compelling story with lyrical prose and wonderful characters...this is a great summer read for those who like to go outside with a book you can't put down.