The Masterpiece by Francine Rivers

Wow!! Wow!! Wow!!  Talk about a beautiful big thick hardcover book, this is the one. I was so pleased when I opened the box to see this book.

However, we all know it takes more than a beautiful cover to make a good book and Francine has delivered again. She writes phenomenal fiction, fiction that can dig deep in your soul and cause you to look around and see how you are living life.

This book causes me to look around and give thanks for a good home, for a solid foundation. It also can stir my heart to feel for those around me who did not have that same privilege. It makes me aware of how much my good upbringing has helped to solidify who I am today and how much easier it was to get to where I am today.

This is a book of  hope. No matter your upbringing, whether your mom was a prostitute, selling her body to buy food and drugs that helped her forget and your dad was unknown or whether your dad had an anger problem that ultimately caused the death of your parents at age seven, God is there. He is tenderly calling and drawing the lost child to himself as much as He is the child raised in church.

This is a book that reminds us that Christians are fallible. We still need to have a solid connected relationship to Jesus to stand strong in the temptations. Christians are humans, they have to work to break down barriers, to trust and to work through tough childhoods. The advantage they have is hope and Jesus.

This book reminds us that with God all things are possible. Near death experiences, I believe, really do happen and they can cause a dramatic transformation in a person's life. You will never know when you might be at the right place at the right time to speak that word that may make all the difference in another person's life.

Yes, this book does condone divorce and remarriage and if you read my reviews, you know that that is always a downer for me on the worth of a story. While I think the hope in Jesus that is offered in this book is powerful, that piece does hinder me from giving 100% endorsement to the story.

Francine's goal in writing this book? "The questions that started the project had to do with how childhood trauma can impact an adult life. It seems our culture is filled with damaged people from broken homes and relationships. I wanted to explore two individuals and how traumatic childhood experiences impact their adult thinking and behavior. Can they have a normal life?...It isn't only about two broken people trying to find wholeness together. It's about where wholeness can be found for each and every one of us. In Christ Jesus. No place else."

And Francine makes that very clear in this book. It takes Roman giving up on restoring relationship with Grace and focusing on building a relationship with God and being mentored by a pastor before he is able to break free of his past and build a new life in Christ.

And then there is the amazing ability of Roman as an artist. That is a part I will never understand, being a person who can only draw stick figures, but it is a part I have to completely admire.

I received this book from Tyndale Publishers and was not required to write a positive review.