Archive | November 2019

What Follows After by Dan Walsh

Mending The Broken

What Follows After by Dan Walsh is a powerful Christian historical suspense novel about the goodness and the faithfulness of God.

The novel is set in 1962 as the world teeters on the edge of another world war and at the height of the Cold War. As the world waits with baited breath, so a family waits as their world is rocked. 1962 was a very different time to today. Dan Walsh has perfectly captured the atmosphere of fear, of a lack of personal phones, the movement of the military and the use of personal servants. We see the dynamics of a young man who was closer to the Negro lady who bought him up than to his own mother.

Failed marriages in 1962 were seen as shameful. As a family hides behind a smoke screen of lies, their world is shaken to the core. “Was God punishing her for all those lies?” God is a good Father. He does not punish us in that way. It is just life that is hard.

We need to build our lives on firm foundations. We need to build them on the Rock so that when the hard times come, and they will, we will not crumble.

Continue reading

The Survivors by Kate Furnivall

Walking Through The Fires

The Survivors by Kate Furnivall is a powerful epic historical novel that consumed me from the start.

The novel is set in 1945 mainly in a displaced persons camp in Europe. The war is officially over but for thousands of people there still is nowhere to go. An air of suspicion hangs over the camp as people await their future.

War alters people. They behave by a different set of rules and moral code. They do what they have to do to survive. Lies easily roll off the tongue. Whose version of the truth is correct? Favours are still being called in. Past secrets lie hidden until a face from the past threatens to reveal them.

A mother’s love is fiercely protective. It governs her movements as we witness a close bond within the novel. The pair fight for life for each other.

Continue reading

The Journal Of Ezekiel Walker by John J Zelenski

At The Name Of Jesus

The Journal Of Ezekiel Walker by John J Zelenski is a Christian supernatural historical read set in 1945.

The novel shows that life is a spiritual battle and sometimes these forces of evil manifest themselves to us, either in dreams or face to face. The fight is very real. We need to stand on the Word of God and the Name of Jesus as we fight these demons. At the Name of Jesus the demons will flee. God has given us the gift of discernment. We would be wise to use it.

Continue reading

The Good Doctor Of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford

A Light In The Darkness

The Good Doctor Of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford is a powerful true story of Dr Janusz Korczak and his love and care of children in his Warsaw orphanage during World War II.

This is a harrowing read and not for the faint hearted. Elisabeth Gifford tells it as it was and life in the Warsaw ghetto under the Nazis was horrendous. I am sure that the horrors described were even more horrific in reality as we ‘see’ man’s inhumanity to man. Through it all, Dr Korczak believed that deep down even then Nazis must have a heart, sadly he was proved wrong. The Nazis were a systematic killing machine, operating with brutality and efficiency. They never saw the individual.

Dr Korczak always believed in the rights of children to be cared for, loved and safe. A decorated war hero from World War I, Dr Korczak lectured and wrote about the need for children’s rights until the Nazis stripped him of his rights as he was Jewish. It always seems so awful that you can be good enough to fight in one war but not good enough to be seen in another.

Dr Korczak could not abandon the children in his care and transferred his orphanage to inside the ghetto. Far from abandoning children, he ended up overseeing four thousand children in the ghetto. “His orphanage is … a little oasis.” Whenever Dr Korczak saw a child in trouble, he rescued them. “Korczak… represents: justice, kindness, fairness and love. He is their candle held up against the darkness, the gleam of sunshine that makes the ghetto smile.” Even when given a chance to escape the transport to Treblinka, Dr Korczak would not abandon his children. “You do not leave a child alone to face the dark.”

Continue reading