Gravel Road Musings

  How the Power of Sisterhood and Taking Risks can Jump-Start Your Joy What do sky-diving, white-water rafting, zip lining, motorcycle riding, etc. have in common? They take Sheri Hunter out of her comfort zone and force her to find strength to move on. In facing her fears through physical feats, she is also able to face her fears inside of herself and find joy in life once again. Her husband, Mannard, was her rock. They had a good marriage with dreams for the future until one day when it is all cut short. Mannard suffers a heart attack and dies at only 50 years of age. Sheri is devastated and unsure of how to move on. There were so many things Mannard took care of and now she is left to flounder on her own. But she has a group of friends who has been there for each other and they stand by her now. They stand by her and encourage her to take risks. They become known as the Dare Divas, and while they have some rough spots, they are committed to standing together and this enables She...

  How a New York Drug Lord Found Freedom in the Last Place He Expected This book was siting on my TBR list for a long time and I just couldn't get enthused about picking it up, but finally, I needed to read it for a reading challenge. And I am so glad I did and sad I didn't read this earlier. This book grabbed me and pulled me in and I read it in two days. Herman grew up as the youngest in a family of boys and from a very young age, he took to the streets, doing drugs, running with gangs, seeing his friends get shot. He married young and tried to straighten his life out, but when a good job working for his older brothers selling drugs opened up, he couldn't resist the good money it brought in. But eventually his life fell apart. A crumbling marriage, a baby out of an ongoing affair, and a second offense, Herman finds himself in prison. But not just any prison. Herman finds himself in the same prison, the same area as his older brother and his older brother couldn't be h...

  The third book in The Sugar Baron's Daughters, Selah wraps up the story of the three sisters while still leaving a lot of loose ends. While the story of the sisters is somewhat neatly tied up on a bow, there is still the questions of how did they survive the Revolutionary War while living in the West Indies, did they succeed in convincing more plantation owners to free their slaves, did August Shubert meet his match, and more. I went into this book just wanting to finish the series and know what happened to the sisters--mostly who did Selah marry, but I feel like this book was more than that. Selah is young, but she has matured a lot in the three years of living on the Nevis Island. She has a heart of compassion and is constantly pushing her sister and brother-in-law out of their comfort zones as they try to protect her from one scrape after another.  Jedidiah is the Methodist minister who felt God calling him to the West Indies to work with slaves. He makes his home on the ...

  A Fascinating Guide to the Land of the Bible It took me a long time to pick this book up. When I requested that I wanted to review it, I was thinking it would be what the title says: an atlas. Then I got it and it was filled with writing in small print and it looked more like a textbook than anything and I lost interest. So here I am, months later, finally reviewing it. And to be honest, I was surprised. It is full of writing and full of maps, but I found it interesting as John gave a look at the lay of the land and how it related to different eras in the Bible, starting with Creation. I found the book informative and well-written. It provided a better view of how the geography and the Bible interconnected and how the lay of the land affected the stories. And once again, I realized that Israel was not just a fertile soil that produced crops with ease, it was a hard land that required much labor, but it was still the land that God gave to His people. I received this book from Bake...

  I will read any book that Erin Bartels writes; I have enjoyed everyone of them.  Two sisters, estranged for a decade decide to go hiking in the Porcupine Mountains. One sister is hoping for reconciliation, one is simply trying to get the other one to stop bugging her. One is a micro-manager, bossy big sister, one is just trying to gain approval and have a good time. One believes in nothing and one believes in everything. How is this hike going to go? And all-encompassing is the question, what happened ten years ago that cause the estrangement between the sisters? I'm not going to tell you the answer to that question. In fact, I'm not going to tell you much more about the book, except this--it all went wrong. The hike was a disaster and the looming question is: if there is a God why did He let everything go wrong? And yet? There is an answer to that question by the end of the book-a life-saving answer. How do I describe the book? I think it was life-changing for each sister a...