After four years of absence from the book reading and reviewing community, this is the book that pulled me back in. My other half had dragged me into Hobby Lobby and on their bookshelf near the front, this book called to me from its designated shelf. I am one of those people that can't stand to pay more in person when I can just get it online for less, but this time the price difference was just pennies, and I asked Jake if he would get it for me. I had paid for our date that day, so I didn't feel bad asking him to purchase it, but I specifically wanted him to buy it for me because my ex-husband burned my library of thousands and thousands of books. The memories were not at all good ones, but I knew if I could just get my foot in the door with reading Christian Fiction again, I could somewhat erase the past and build a new future.
Running away from an abusive husband is hard to do after seven years, but I ran about as far as I could manage and joined the Army in August of 2014. My journey in life had brought me to a place very similar to Bathsheba's, in the end I paid the price just as she did, twice, but God has blessed me and I now have a year old son, with another on the way. His ways are not our ways, and it took a bad seven year marriage, four years in the Army, two miscarriages, and a lot of bad experiences to get me to where I am today.
Unveiled is about Tamar of the Old Testament, the woman whom Judah (Joseph's older brother) brought into his household and married her to his eldest son. She is a woman who had no future, no hope of being a part of the kingdom of God, but God grafted her into his Family.
Unashamed takes us to the dusty city of Jericho, where Rahab has a place in the wall. A woman with no way of having a voice in the world of men, she hides the spies whose parents have wandered the desert for 40 years after leaving Egypt. As a prostitute there is no reason why she should ever have been a part of the lineage of God's people, but she too, joined the faithful few.
Unshaken visits the life and story of Ruth; the famed Moabitess who followed her mother-in-law, Naomi, to the land of Israel after their husbands died in Moab. She is stubborn, but has faith that the God of Naomi is more powerful than her country's gods of clay and stone. She meets Boaz upon gleaning from his fields, and the rest is history. Boaz is Rahab's son, and he and Ruth bear Obed, who is Jesse's father, and the grandfather of King David.
Unspoken is the well known tale of David and Bathsheba, complete with the adulterous details of how one woman was the reason that an entire kingdom fell. It is sobering to realize that David's sin with Bathsheba did not end with one night; it extended to not only the rest of his life, but the loss of life of his sons and the kingdom itself. A particular detail was of interest to me in that Bathsheba was somewhere in the middle of what became a long line of wives. Those who had come before her had borne many sons, and yet her son Solomon, was given the crown. Which means that all the sons before him had to die. It's something that's a part of the history of it all, and yet it struck me anew as I read her story.
Unafraid takes us right to the part of the story that the last four stories have been pointing to - the birth of the Messiah. I can't say that I've read a lot of stories regarding Mary and her life, so this was a refreshing first for me. Mary is a woman of courage, just like her predecessors, but in this reimagining, she worries and frets more than anything before the Crucifixion. I think this is a possibility, because now I am a mother, and can understand her worries and her questions. In the end her faith and service to the Lord was rewarded.
