This week the Christian Fiction Review Blog invites you to take a trip with Matt, Irene and Casey Moore, from southern California, to a northern town called Breakers. It's a trip from the sunny, hopeful lives of their past into a drizzly gray pit of despair. A place they hope to put some of the pieces back together and build a new life for themselves.Not being very clear? Sorry. The book runs like that for a while. You get hints of things that have gone wrong. Bits and pieces of a family that has been tragically torn apart come in at a maddeningly slow pace, and yet, this pace may have much to do with the dramatic conclusion to the story.
Matt and Irene Moore have lost their two sons, Daniel and Jesse. Whisking away to Breakers with their daughter in the attempts to hold the remaining family together, and perhaps even start a new life. Yet their own personal tragedies and pains come with them as if they had packed them carefully to join them in Breakers. This family unit has now divided into 3 parts, the father who questions his own actions, yet blames the son. The mother who blames the father and still reaches out to find that compassion again. The daughter, who as she is growing into a young lady, rebels at her parent's decision to push her brother's out of all memory.
Yet, Someone to Blame is a book about redemption, about how God can take even the most horrible circumstances, and makes something good out of it. It's about a God who loves more deeply than those who have lost these loved ones, but is non-the-less a God who is always in control. What we learn about ourselves, our neighbors, the need for God's love to fill the gaping whole in the lives of those around us, becomes central to the story. Lakin doesn't pretty things up. She tells it like it is. She drags you through their despair, showing that you have to go through it in order to be victorious over it. The message is simply, if you want someone to blame, look at yourself, then realize God paid for all the faults you've made by the blood of His Son Jesus Christ. He took the blame off of us and put it on Him.
This is a fine book, although it may appeal to some people more than others because of its style, yet I would encourage all to read it, and if you must, push your way through it. You'll be the better for it.
You can read more by visiting:Someone To Blame
And don't forget to visit her personal site:
C. S. Lakin
You can find Someone to Blame sold at the following online stores:
Christian Book
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Target
Check out these other member blogs this week for more info.
Legal Notice:
It has become the legal obligation for us to notify you, the viewers, that we who have reviewed this book have received, in most cases, a copy of this work for free. While our reviews are in some fashion a payment for this book it does not diminish the quality of the work whatever they may try to make us say. This is a quality book. You would do good to read it.
