Gravel Road Musings

  Trusting God Through my Greatest Heartbreak Mattie Jackson Selecman was just 28 years old when her worst nightmare came to pass. Widowed after less than a year of marriage, her world fell apart. In this book, she records her journey over the last 3 years and how she is learning and growing through her grief. Normally, reading a book doesn't really affect me and I can read and go straight to sleep, but I finished this book at bedtime and it took me a bit to fall asleep. I think it was mostly because my mind played the what-ifs game and I needed to commit my family to God. This book is raw, but also hopeful as well.  "We do all we can to not live in the fear of Friday or Saturday, but to hoard, herald and hold captive the joy of Sunday. Why wouldn't we? We long for Sunday just as we long for lemonade." "What I can tell you is that in the middle of my worst nightmare come true, even when I didn't know how to talk to God or trust God, God continued to show me h...

  A Mother's Search for Grace I saw this book on NetGalley and was immediately intrigued. Why? Because I recognized the author's name. Right away, I went to Shari's blog to see if it was the Shari I am acquainted with. Sure enough. That was all the impetus I needed to pick the book up right away and start reading. The message of the book and the style of writing kept me spellbound through the entire book. My only regret is that it is not published yet so I cannot hold a paper copy in my hands, flipping back and forth, and drinking in the words.  For me, reading a digital copy, it is harder to go back and forth and fully take in the language and the emotion of the words in front of me. So I eagerly await the arrival of the paper copy in July.  Life has dealt me some blows and I have dealt with depression in a small scale. Reading Shari's words opened up depression for me in a much bigger, more real way. Listening to her fight against the darkness and then finally take th...

  Big Lessons from a Little Donkey on Faith, Friendship, and Finding Your Path Rachel Anne Ridge is the author of Flash, another inspirational book about a donkey. I highly enjoyed this book and was happy to see her write another book. It did take me a long time to get to reading it. Since Flash, the first donkey showed up on their farm until Henry came to join them, a lot of things had happened, hard things that caused Rachel to question a lot of things. It would seem like she started from scratch to rebuild her faith and figure out what she believed. While I don't think she ever doubted God and His existence, things had happened that shook her foundation. My biggest negative about this book is that it seems that the foundational element of Creation was also shaken in this book and I cannot agree with her current perspective, especially not related to some of the resources she cited in the back of the book.  That being said, there were some good things in her book. She starte...

  Laura Callaway is an orphan that was sent to live in Cornwall. Here she finds the culture and people different from what she was used to and she struggles to fit in and feel accepted.  She makes a hobby of looking for flotsam and jetsam along the shores where shipwrecks are quite common. I found the definitions of flotsam and jetsam interesting. Flotsam  is goods floating on the sea where a ship sunk and jetsam is anything that was purposely cast out of the ship in hopes of saving the ship. She tried to find the owners of the things she found if it was at all possible.  And one night she rescues a man who struggled to shore after a ship wrecked on rocks. But who is this man and is he really who he says is and can he be trusted? For the answers to that, you will have to read the book. This book, while classified as historical fiction, is mostly fictional, but yet loosely based on things that could have happened in that era of time. Tom Parsons, a wrecker, was a real...

  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 ...

This is the third book in the Codebreaker's series and it's a good one. There is something about this book that is so real and so good. It's not just all happy endings. There is grief, loss, and danger, along with joy and love. But isn't that so real to our own normal lives? Set in London during World War I, Zivon Marin has fled his beloved Russia because the Bolsheviks have made it very clear that in their quest for equality for all, they do not tolerate differing opinions. Reduced to the low man on the totem pole, Zivon must prove his allegiance and his loyalty while someone else wants to disprove it. I keep a book journal and it's rare that I fill more than one page for any book and for sure not in a fiction book, but this book had me copying more than my normal amount of quotes. There are just some good things in this book. "But Batya used to say that the difference between a wise man and a fool was not that the wise man was right and the fool wrong - but t...

 Her debut novel, Katie Powner has me anxiously awaiting any more novels she might be writing.  This is the kind of story I am looking for, a story with feelings and emotions, but not romance, a true-to-life story, a story that has you turning the pages because you want to know if the characters made it through, if they were able to restore relationships. Gerrit is a crotchety man recently retired from farm life and struggling to find his way back to his wife, his family, even to his own life, to find peace with himself. Rae is struggling to live up to her parents' expectations and feels like it all depends on her to hold everything together.  Then there's Morgan and Taylor and Kylee and David and Gerrit's wife, Hannie, and his children, Evi and Noah and,  of course, the neighbor across the street.  I just loved this book. I want to read Christian fiction, but get disillusioned because it all seems to be boy meets girl, the end.  But this book had depth: br...

I don't always post my NetGalley book reviews on here, but this was a really good book that I would recommend to those who like World War II historical fiction. Another World War II historical fiction book.  There are a lot of them out there and I have been enjoying them, even though they are rather hard reading.  This book is more historically based than some historical fiction books are.  It follows the lives of two fictitious Jewish boys, Jacob and Moses, on the quest to find their parents. It is based in France during the Nazi occupation, so it was a setting I was unfamiliar with. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon was a simple village in France that was home to thousands of refugees during the war.  It was fascinating to read about real people who were willing to risk all to help their brothers and sisters regardless of race or religion. Jacob and Moses showed the resilience of the human spirit. They were determined and willing to move forward in spite of great risks...

Finding Soul-Deep Strength in a Skin-Deep World I picked this book because a friend had talked about getting it and I was curious what it was about. The title is catching and makes you wonder what the author is meaning to talk about. Well, it turns out, that that is exactly what the author wanted to address: Stop calling me beautiful. In an age, where women strive for beauty, where we give lip service to God and tell our fellow sisters that they are beautiful and God loves them and now all their troubles should be over, Phylicia comes with a different message. She brings a message of change, but also one of lasting hope. She encourages women to move past the "pink fluff" of being beautiful in God's eyes, which while true can hide a lot of sin, and to purse lasting change, to pursue a real relationship with God.  "Being told we're beautiful in God's eyes is a surface response to a soul-deep problem. That problem is our own sinfulness." "A wor...

Twelve months, eleven family members, and one impossible goal First off, how fun is that cover? Rain and sunshine, so fitting for grumbling, right? Or not grumbling? I just think this is a fun looking cover. Calling it a social experiment and a book contract, Tricia joins forces with her husband, John, their 8 children still at home, and her grandma who lives with them, but has dementia, to try a year of no grumbling.  How can this possibly work?  When you embark upon an experiment like this, you have no idea what the end result will be, but however it ends, there will be a book about it.  Tricia hopes, before starting the experiment, that this will be a real example to other moms about her skills and intentionality with her children, but realizes very shortly that there is so much more to this. This experiment becomes about changing from the inside, it becomes about letting God be in control, it becomes not a year completely free of grumbling, but a year in which a...

The Inspiring True Story of Green Beret Medic Gary Beikirch, Medal of Honor Recipient Courage for Battle, Faith for Crisis I really knew nothing about the Vietnam War when I started this book. I did know it was a controversial war in the US, but other than that, not much. Gary is a Green Beret medic, committed to the Montagnard people he was there to protect. They became his friends and he loved them. When April 1, 1970 dawned and the siege of Dak Seang began, Gary was all in. Even though he was badly injured himself, he persisted in being dragged around in the midst of the battle, to help others who were injured. What he saw and what he endured was unimaginable.  This is not a spoiler, it's in the prologue of the book. But this doesn't end up being Gary's biggest battle, he has his own internal demons to fight and they are determined to win. I don't want to give more of the story away, but to say this, Jesus gave him the answer to his hurts and struggles, but...

Adventure, family, loyalty, intrigue, and of course romance mark this book. And while that is just the norm for this sort of book, I really think there are some good takeaways from this book. The two main characters, Arabelle Denler and Philip Camden could not be more opposite. One is all light and goodness and compassion and the other is called Black Heart for a reason. And yet, when you dig below you discover that Black Heart has a heart that is packed full of loyalty, a loyalty that will take a bullet to protect his men and their families. That is an impressive quality to have and one of the takeaways I encourage from this book.  Let's be loyal to our friends and family: don't be nice to their face and then stab them behind their backs. Arabelle was a nurse and full of compassion and grace and faith in God. She was always out to take care of the disadvantaged, comfort the hurting, and just show love to the world at large. And yet, the book showed her to be human, she w...

A True Story Heartrending, amazing, horrific, redemptive, abuse, forgiveness. This book has it all. I feel like this has to be a true story because you can't make stuff like this up. Debra is a foster mom and takes in a family of five. I don't want to give a lot of details, but there was an unprecedented order to send the children back to their mom. This caused great concern and well it should have for the end result.  But then Debra is asked to do a really hard thing and she wants to say no so very bad, but she feels God telling her to say yes and it leads to something beautiful, but still hard. I don't know how to describe this book without giving any spoilers, but it was so good and so sad and so redemptive and so heart-wrenching. But it was amazing to see God at work in changing lives and providing forgiveness even though there are still consequences for sin. "But life isn't a fairy tale, and we are not owed blissful happy endings. We are called to ...

The Charleston church shooting, A victim's husband, and the Path to healing and peace. On June 17, 2015, Dylan Storm Roof entered the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. He went down to the fellowship hall, joined a Bible study, and as they finished the study with prayer, he got out his gun and shot 77 times, killing 9 people, and horrifying a nation. He calmly walked out of the church, got in his car and left. His reason? They had the wrong color skin. His tracker showed that he drove to another church that same evening, sat outside for a few minutes and then left. His regret? Absolutely nothing. And yet, two days later, at his bond hearing, Reverend Anthony Thompson stood up and publicly forgave Dylan, imploring him to give his life to God. This book was different than I expected. While giving a lot of details about the shooting and the trial, it also pulled in a lot of other hate crimes and really centered the most on Biblical forgiveness.  I was expecting ...

Ah, Julie has done it again with a lovely novel that is on the thicker side and makes you want to sink down into a comfy chair with a cup of tea and a scone and read all afternoon. This one had a taste of mystery in it, who really did commit the murder? This is not a big spoiler because the murder happens within the first chapter, I believe and the rest of the book is built on finding the killer. But the book doesn't evolve like you would expect and I found myself leafing ahead so I could discover the murderer and I was surprised. And books like that are good. The island sounds lovely and quaint. I mean who wouldn't want to live on a whole island with a bridge that reaches over to the mainland? How fun does that sound? Panic/anxiety attacks are real and need to be treated with respect and care, but it does seem like more could have been done for them, but then again, considering the doctor...well you will have to read the book. One of the verses that stuck out to me...

I have no idea why I waited so long to get this book read. Have you ever looked forward to reading a book and almost didn't want to start because you were afraid that the hype might not prove worth it? I think this was that kind of book for me. I believe I have read the last 4, now 5, books that Terri Blackstock has written and they have been excellent. But I wasn't sure about this one, maybe it would let me down and so I put off reading it or at least that is the mind game I think that I subconsciously played. It just wasn't pulling me in. But then.... I picked up this book on Sunday and I finished it this morning, two days later. It did not disappoint at all and I will definitely have my eyes out for the next book by Terri Blackstock. A murder and a fire take center stage as the underlying themes of the book, but there are so many facets of the story that streak out from that central theme.  A few things I came away with is that community can be hurtful or it can be...

The year is 1843, the year is 1944, the year is present-day, the lady is Elizabeth or Amelia or Keira, the man is Keaton or Wyatt or Emory. Take your pick on which characters you want to root for or if you want to root for all of them. Yes, this book jumps back and forth between three different timeframes and, of course, three different sets of people. Because of this, I think, it took me a while before the story pulled me in. You have to read a lot more of the book before you get a handle on each character and what is happening, but when the story pulled me in, I was hooked. Often in these kinds of books that flip back and forth between time periods, I really am interested in only one story and endure the others. And I thought this would be the case again: what interest was I really going to have in 1843, but I was so very wrong. By the time, the book was done, I was interested in all three time periods and really, really wanted to know what happened to each character. And the endi...

This is the first book I have read by Melanie Dobson and I certainly hope it isn't the last. I already have one book of hers on order from a rewards program and I already scoured the library to see what they had available to borrow. So that's high praise to start this review. I haven't read a lot of World War II historical fiction until the past few months. It's so heartbreaking to read and yet it can be so redemptive. Now, I realize that not all the actual happenings of WWII were redemptive, but I can appreciate the efforts authors make to bring those bittersweet, redemptive endings to their historical fiction. Melanie did an amazing job of bringing an aspect of World War II to life that I had no idea about. Who knew that some American businessmen had invested in the Nazi regime before and during the war? I had no idea that that had happened and it made me so sad. And yet it was encouraging to read about the many children that were rescued in Holland despite Hitl...

For some time now, I have been wanting to do more purposeful writing. While I don't consider myself a professional at all, I do enjoy the craft of writing and trying to put words to my thoughts. This book looks like a great opportunity to practice my writing skills along with helping me to think outside of the box in what I'm writing about. I have not read the entire book. To me, this is not the kind of book you sit down and read from cover to cover. I think that might drown whatever spark of creativity you had when you started if you were to read all 365 invitations at once. I plan to keep this book close and use it on a regular basis in 2020 and maybe even beyond. Some of the creative invitations included in this book are: "Write a permission slip for yourself to do something, to be something, or to create something you've held back from pursuing." or "Turn your attention to a secondhand object. Write about its journey or about an imagined previous ow...

Karen Kingsbury does it again. Only four chapters in and I was wiping my tears. I haven't read a lot of Karen's books in the last couple of years, but this is the second one this year and I am really wanting to go back and start at the beginning and read all of her backlists. This book is once again about the Baxter's, a lovely close-knit family that Karen has devoted many books to. The main character is Cole, an 18-year-old son of Ashley Baxter Blake. He is mature for his age, compassionate and completely sold out for God. Elise, the other main character, is also 18 and one semester of bad choices has led to a teen pregnancy. This is the journey of first love, hard choices, redemption, and lasts. And I hope it's not the last we will hear of Cole and Elise. I want to know how their story ends. This book gripped me. I couldn't read it fast enough and yet I didn't want it to end. I think there were a few reasons for this, one was in the early pages of the bo...