Tuesday, November 30, 2010

City of Tranquil Light / Review

Author: Bo Caldwell
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
(September 28, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0805092285

Book Description:

Will Kiehn is seemingly destined for life as a humble farmer in the Midwest when, having felt a call from God, he travels to the vast North China Plain in the early twentieth-century. There he is surprised by love and weds a strong and determined fellow missionary, Katherine. They soon find themselves witnesses to the crumbling of a more than two-thousand-year-old dynasty that plunges the country into decades of civil war. As the couple works to improve the lives of the people of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng— City of Tranquil Light, a place they come to love—and face incredible hardship, will their faith and relationship be enough to sustain them?
Told through Will and Katherine's alternating viewpoints—and inspired by the lives of the author's maternal grandparents—City of Tranquil Light is a tender and elegiac portrait of a young marriage set against the backdrop of the shifting face of a beautiful but torn nation.

A deeply spiritual book, it shows how those who work to teach others often have the most to learn.


My Review:

This historical novel, inspired by the author's grandparents, takes us on a spiritual journey-- into the lives of two lovers and their experiences within China. Great hardships threaten to destroy a faith that seems unshakable. The story in electric, beautiful, passionate, and tender. Will faith and love survive? 5 stars*****

(Thank you to Henry Holt and Company for my review copy.)

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