The Voyage of Promise: Grace in Africa Series #2 [Kindle Edition]

KAY MARSHALL STROM (Author)

Book Description

She is safe, and she is free . . . but she is still alone.

Slavers burst into Grace Winslow's life with guns blazing and tear her family apart forever. She watches in anguish as her husband is led in chains aboard a tightly packed slave ship bound for America.  An old enemy has a more sinister plan for Grace and prepares her for a different kind of servitude in London. But Grace will not be enslaved. And she will not give up on the man she loves. In her determination to be reunited with her husband, she finds God reaching out to her.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Straight from the nightmare of the eighteenth-century African slave trade comes the second installment in Strom’s historical inspirational series, Grace in Africa. Best known for her nonfiction work, Once Blind: The Life of John Newton (2008), Strom skillfully weaves historical fact into an historical romance to conjure the atmosphere of this time, and the horror of a family being ripped apart at the seams. As the story of Grace Winslow, a woman with an African royal for a mother, an Englishman for a father, and an African husband recently taken captive in the slave trade continues, she is determined not to be enslaved or to lose her beloved forever. Grace will speak to women of faith in this robust tale recommended for admirers of triumphant women and realistic depictions of the heart-wrenching past. --Elizabeth Ponder

About the Author

Of Kay Marshall Strom’s 39 published books, four have been book club selections, nine have been translated into foreign languages, and one has been optioned for a movie. Her writing credits also include the Grace in Africa Series and the Blessings in India series. Her writing has appeared in several volumes, including More Than Conquerors, Amazing Love, The NIV Couple's Devotional Bible and The NIV Women's Devotional Bible, and The Bible for Today's Christian Woman. Her best-known book is Once Blind: The Life of John Newton, which is packaged with the recently released DVD Amazing Grace. She also has written several books with her husband, Dan Kline. Kay is a partner in Kline, Strom International, Inc., leaders in communication training. She currently lives in Eugene, Oregon. Learn more about Kay at www.kaystrom.com

Product Details

• File Size: 701 KB
• Print Length: 322 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1426702124
• Publisher: Abingdon Press (March 1, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0043VEGQ6
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #118,116 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A book with an impact! March 5, 2011

By Katie McCurdy

Format:Paperback

This was a moving read that is sure to touch its reader's heart. Grace Winslow's story is powerful and rings with truth. How many countless women in Africa knew the same, or worse, horrors. As I read about Cabeto's story, I couldn't help cringing and gapping in horror. It is so sad to see how some humans can treat others with such depravity--and so cold heartedly! Indeed, the slave trade was a nightmare for those Africans taken from their homes by force. I can't imagine surviving on one of those slave ships. When Cabeto described how packed they were, my skin began to crawl--I would be so claustrophobic in there, I'd go crazy!

As I read about Grace's adventures in the first book and neared the ending of this book, I had the feeling that book 2 didn't have as much action/adventure as book 1 had, and as book 3 seems bound to have. I still enjoyed the story and found it easy to be drawn into its pages. Kay writes with such blatant truth--never pulling any punching in regards to the slave trade and how slaves were treated--you are sure to learn something new through The Voyage of Promise. Though she doesn't hide the horrors of the slave trade, there wasn't anything inappropriate in this book. Besides the mention of one sailor trying to get frisky with Grace, nothing else even caught my attention as something that readers need be warned about.

The story often changed to another character's point of view (POV) throughout the book, without so much as a sentence break. While this didn't ruin the story or confuse me, it took me a while to get used to it. There were many characters in this story that, I felt, had been in the first book. While I did learn a little bit about them, I had the feeling that they were spoken of more in depth in the first book.

Reading about Grace's little baby was very sad. After the scene ended, I stared at the page for a little while, thinking "No way. That did not just happen!" But it did. One of the sad truths of the slave trade. I felt that her baby's story was told a bit hurriedly and briefly. I didn't feel remorse along with Grace about her baby because, after her initiate mourning, it is many chapters until she thinks of him again. While this was a fact I noticed, it did not ruin the story for me in any way.

Reaching the last page, I am now left hanging. Taking advantage of the first two chapters of the next book (which I found at the back of Voyage of Promise) I find myself left with a cliffhanger. I cant wait until the next book comes out. Grace wants nothing more than to go to America to search for her beloved Cabeto...but how can she do that from prison? Wow! Yes, as I said, a cliffhanger! You won't regret the time spent reading this wonderful, eye-opener book.

Special thanks to the author for sending me a review copy. It was not required that I give a positive review, but solely to express my own thoughts and opinions of this book, which I have done.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Voyage of Promise December 22, 2010

A Kid's Review

Format:Paperback

It is one thing to read that slaves were brought to this country in colonial and early national days or that African slaves were brought to England to be sold, and quite another to live that life vicariously. In one sense I did not enjoy reading this account. In another, I find it essential. We read historical fiction to experience what it was like, the human side, not the factual side of life. To be in that period as a slave is very different from reading a few facts in a history text. As usual, Kay Strom has done an excellent job of on site research and brings this period to life very effectively.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Goes deep, makes you think February 12, 2011

By Jeanette Morris

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

History matters. Not just the dates and the what-happened facts. Not just the famous names who made their marks on important documents. Ordinary people also contributed to our history--people who saw the need for change, who stood for justice when it wasn't popular to do so, who never gave up the cause for freedom. Kay Marshall Strom draws wonderful word pictures of people like these in her Grace in Africa series. Yes, of course her characters are fictional--but they are born out of painstaking research, out of passion, and out of a desire to communicate present-day conditions through stories of past struggles.

The second book in the Grace in Africa series, Voyage of Promise, gives the reader an almost too-close experience on board a slave ship bound for England in the late 1700s. Being in the mind and heart of a man living this horror will change you. Our story's heroine, Grace Winslow--the estranged daughter of an African princess and a British slave ship owner--believes she will be reunited with Cabeto, her African husband, in London and live a life of happiness together, in spite of the murder of their son and being ripped away from all they knew and loved in Africa. Little does she know her husband is bound for the Americas--and no one in London, not even her own father, is interested in helping her. She unknowingly becomes embroiled in an unpopular anti-slavery movement, which turns sour and puts her in harms way--a place she has become rather used to. Grace is determined, resourceful--and, yes, sometimes impulsive and foolhardy. But she represents what is best in those who truly care about making a difference in our world. And she believes that she, like the biblical Queen Esther, was born "for such a time as this."

If you love historical fiction, you will love this series. Be prepared to care again--to learn something--and to lose yourself in another place and time, at least for a few hours. Kay Marshall Strom never disappoints.

More About the Author

I am a writer and speaker who loves learning about the world. And what better way to learn than to travel? My dear husband puts up with me... even accompanies me on occasion.

Of course, the more I learn, the more I want to write. And then I want to jump up on my soapbox and share all my insights and ideas.

For years I've been known as a writer of non-fiction. That's still true, but I am also having the time of my life writing fiction. Sometimes there is no better way to share a passion than through a rollicking good story! I just finished writing one historical trilogy, "Grace in Africa," (Book 1: The Call of Zulina, Book 2: The Voyage of Promise, Book 3: The Triumph of Grace). Now I'm working on the next series, "Blessings in India." What fun! It's like eating my chocolate dessert when I haven't finished my broccoli!

Come, explore the world with me. Together we'll strive to make it a better place.