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“Like her grandparents, her parents had managed to bring only one child into this world, another daughter. And now it was Lydia’s turn to fight for this last piece of her family’s inheritance, this tiny patch of land that represented everything good and safe and noble in this world. Home and her father and purple. Lydia was content if the world had nothing else to offer.”
“Don’t do it Eddie. Please,” Grandma begged. “Think of your children. Go down there tomorrow and tell the army you changed your mind.”
“I can’t. It’s too late.” He spoke so softly that Esther thought she might have imagined it. For sure Grandma hadn’t heard him. But then he cleared his throat and said in a louder voice, “I already resigned from my job. I leave for basic training in two weeks.”
His words gave Esther the same empty, floating feeling she’d had after Mama died, as if she were a fluff of dandelion, no longer tethered to the earth. What was going to happen to her?
While We’re Far Apart
By Lynn Austin
Bethany House Publishers, ©2010 Continue reading “Full Review, While We’re Far Apart”
The long sweep of beach that fronted the village was my favorite place. During those first days on the island, it became the spot I headed for with my Bible every morning after breakfast, the place I went when I needed five minutes alone. A row of tall coconut trees growing on the fringe of the jungle curved out over the sand like a one-armed embrace, and if you looked back from the beach you could see how the village had settled neatly into the bowl of the valley, as if hundreds of frail toy houses had tumbled down the surrounding hills and come to rest together at the bottom.
But one child, looking up, saw farther and deeper and wider than the others. He saw the glittering bursts and showers but he saw fireflies too, and stars, all of them sparks of hope flung upward like prayers into the night. For in one quiet, unexpected moment, he had looked beyond the stars and caught a glimpse of God.
Sutter’s Cross
By W. Dale Cramer
Bethany Press, ©2003
Cravings usually go hand-in-hand with food, but as I was writing this review back in April I found myself craving something a little bigger: summertime. Summertime colors; the creek bubbling to life again; my porch-style swing—oh, how I missed reading and swaying on that swing on a hot day. Where I live it’s a long wait for summertime. Continue reading “Full Review, Sutter’s Cross”
Cousin Albert held out his hand for the photograph. I swallowed and gave it to him. There were two letters in the envelope; one I knew to be Emily’s writing. I looked away. If the other was from Ma I couldn’t bear it. I’d prayed for a letter from her for nearly a year. That Cousin Albert should have both a letter and a photograph, when I had neither, made me hate him. And then I hated myself. What was I thinking, grudging a dying man the only air he wanted?
a page out of her book 