Missing You
Bringing Maggie Home by Kim Vogel Sawyer is a delightful Christian novel about the power of love and loss. It moves backwards and forwards seventy years from 1943. It is a read that really impacted me and my emotions. The reader ‘sees’ life through the eyes of three generations, at various stages throughout their lives.
The novel shows how a loss has the power to affect a family throughout the years, as the events ripples outwards. The pain that a small girl experiences then dictates how she runs her life and has a knock on effect for the generations to follow.
Alternative ways of parenting are revealed in the novel as each generation is determined to parent better than the one before.
God is over the whole novel. He is the perfect parent and yet His children wander from Him. “It took only one generation of neglecting God to turn a faithful family into a faithless one.” God never abandons us but waits and longs for our return.
There is power in prayer. “God doesn’t sleep. He’s listening.” God is available twenty four hours a day. He is always just a prayer away. God always answers but in His way and His timing. “God… I sometimes wonder if you listen to me at all.”
It is important to know our ultimate destination. If we know God and we know we are going to heaven then we know that death is not the end. It is a temporary parting, however painful.
There are the themes of guilt and forgiveness. Sometimes we sail through life and then our guilt catches up with us. As we draw ever closer to God, so He will open our eyes to our wrong doings. We need to both give and receive forgiveness. Holding a grudge will destroy us. Forgiveness is freeing.
Memories are powerful. They have the ability to either haunt our sleep or bring us sweet dreams.
Objects have the power to send us back to a moment in time.
Bringing Maggie Home was an emotional read. The characters were all uniquely drawn but lodged in my heart. A wonderful plotline had me hooked from the start. A mystery to be solved had my heart racing. A love that both bound together and split the generations apart but a love that remained long after the novel had ended.
A perfectly delightful read.
I received this book for free. A favourable review was not required and all views expressed are my own.
JULIA WILSON
Bringing Maggie Home blog tour on Litfuse
This book sounds GREAT! I hope to read it very soon.