Rutabaga's Reads 2021: Part 3

Just yesterday, I posted my first YA compilation of 2021. Here is my first inspirational fiction post for the year.

Acceptable Risk (Aug. 4, 2020) by Lynette Eason.

*This is the second novel in a series.*

Serving in Afghanistan, Sarah (given name Rochelle) Denning is a military journalist with the Army, and she’s been taken hostage with multiple teenage girls. While she fears for the girls she’s surrounded by and the impending plan of selling them as Taliban brides, she also doesn’t want their kidnappers to find out she’s an American and especially that she’s the daughter of Lieutenant General Lewis Denning. Not that she expects Lewis to care anything for her since he disinherited her for joining the military. However, her dad does care, and he enlists former Army Ranger Gavin Black to not only rescue the group, but keep Sarah safe back on home soil. Home soil isn’t where Sarah wants to be, and she’s livid when she discovers that she’s been discharged after a false psychiatric evaluation initiated by her own father. She’s charging forward like an angry rhinoceros, but is halted in her tracks when she learns that her younger brother (not FBI Special Agent Caden Denning, who’s her older brother) has committed suicide. Dustin had been improving by long strides, even Caden agrees. With the help of Caden and Gavin, Sarah’s in investigative journalist mode and is hungry to discover the truth surrounding Dustin’s death. The discovery would be career-ending for some and career-gaining for Sarah … if she can avoid death herself. Is the truth she strives to uncover an acceptable risk?

            Can you handle the truth? Investigative journalism is not an arena I have a knack for, and that is a truth I can handle. Sarah’s investigative skills display her perseverance, but she isn’t lofty in the knowledge of her abilities, which I appreciate. Confidence is respectable, but arrogance is not. I could go without the “romance” angle, but since the story is marketed as inspirational, romantic suspense, it is to be expected and doesn’t overall take away from the speedy narrative. Adding in Eason’s mixture of familial love, betrayal, greed and danger with a sprinkling of faith makes for a tight story from beginning to end. Eason is a force when it comes to inspirational suspense, and I don’t plan to quit reading her stories. Ever!

            Book One: Danger Never Sleeps: Collateral Damage

On Wings of Devotion (Jan. 7, 2020) by Roseanna M. White.

*This is the second novel in a trilogy.*

Black Heart isn’t the monster the media and a distraught widow have made Major Phillip Camden to be, and nurse Arabelle (Ara) Denler knows it as deeply as the roots of her faith. Phillip is a man hurting, a man in need of mercy, a man who doesn’t expect to live, which is why he does not seek out friends or close relationships in or outside of Room 40, where he is a codebreaker (he is stuck with Lieutenant Drake Elton and Margot De Wilde as friends, though). His path unexpectedly crosses Ara’s in an event that is devastating to Ara’s planned future, but it’s the start of Ara encouraging Phillip on a path to healing. It is hard to move forward positively with the ongoing threats from Mrs. Lewis and an old acquaintance (Diellza Mettler) intent on using him in a nefarious plot. Ara’s struggle is that she’s never felt like enough, for the men in her life seem to always leave her. She figures she’ll not marry for love (because she does not perceive herself as physically beautiful), but for the inheritance she has, which is a very lonely thought to have. Ara remains convinced, though, that Phillip Camden’s heart is far from black. Does that mean that his heart can love?

            Like all the other books by White that I’ve read, I highly enjoyed this second story in The Codebreakers. Arabelle is a woman that, while professionally trained as a nurse and working as one, has her heart set on marrying and having a family. She is confident in that conviction, and since it is her choice, I see nothing wrong with it. (I’d have a far different opinion if she felt coerced into future motherhood, which is what Margot (from this book’s predecessor) does not want, and fortunately, Drake understands that.) What makes my heart hurt is that she thinks she’ll only be valued based on her inheritance, as Ara has convinced herself that her outward appearance is lacking. It’s partially because I live in a world where body positivity is encouraged, but mostly, it’s because I have had this internal struggle in years past, and I know I’m not alone, that I understand this infernal type of inner war. Sometimes those doubts still surface, and it is a lot of work to not be down on one’s physical appearance. And to watch Phillip is powerful, too. He’s a man broken to a man leaning on fragile hope before he accepts the Lord. He goes through a lot of darkness to become the man he is on the other side. There are trials, there is darkness and there is heartbreak, but there is also devotion and hope and faith.

            Book 1: The Number of Love

The Stone Wall (Sept. 8, 2020) by Beverly Lewis.

*This is a standalone novel.*

A direct descendant of the founder of the Beachy Amish church, 20-year-old Anna Beachy feels she is at a crossroads. It’s been a year, but she’s still stinging since she lost her beau to the world, and it’s clear she feels unsettled in the small Beachy Amish settlement in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania. When a letter arrives from her Mamm’s Old Order Amish cousins, Glen and Sadie Flaud, of Strasburg (in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County), with information about a job opening for a tour guide at the Mennonite Information Center, Anna jumps at the opportunity, though with humility and thoughtfulness. Despite Anna’s Beachy Amish upbringing (with allowances such as driving a car), she acclimates with ease into the Old Order ways, including the lack of electricity. And with a change in scenery and lifestyle come two potential beaus: one a Mennonite tour guide named Martin Nolt and the other a young widower named Gabe Allgyer. Gabe runs Peaceful Meadows Horse Retreat, where there are horseback riding therapy programs. Participants include Gabe’s adorable five-year-old daughter, Emmie, who became mute when her mom passed away two years prior. Anna is drawn to volunteer at the retreat and connect to little Emmie. But how will Anna balance the two relationships as each seems to grow in significance? Especially when one relationship would surely upset her Beachy Amish parents?

            No matter the conflict within a story by Beverly Lewis, she always manages to make the story, as a whole, calming and understated, which actually makes them all the more indomitable and timeless, no matter the decade the story takes place or the lifestyle differences between the Old Order Amish or me and my array of modern-day conveniences. The plotline for this story showcases an interesting divide – amongst Old Order and Beachy Amish – which many people may be unaware of, and Lewis weaves a potentially poignant connection with Anna and her Mammi Eliza (her grandmother), who’s lucid days and even moments have mostly been stolen by Alzheimer’s. Lewis doesn’t ignore that sadness and loss are involved in any life, but she naturally mingles in faith and love. She isn’t writing epic fiction, but her ability to continually produce captivating novels about the Amish is epic!