BOOK / NOVEL Recommendation: Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

I have loved to read since I was a little girl.  Libraries are wonderful places to go and browse and take home a bunch of books for FREE to read and return.  Benjamin Franklin definitely had a GREAT idea when he came up with the public lending library.  I'd much rather read a good book than listen to the television.

I enjoy learning new things, particularly if they are useful, and lean towards non-fiction most of the time.  I generally do not read fiction unless it's highly recommended and even then, if I start a book and don't like it, I'll stop and go on to something else.   Recently someone loaned me two books by  Karleen Koen, Through a Glass Darkly and Now Face to Face. The latter is a sequel to the former. I started reading the first book and it was like reading Peyton Place. I put it down and went on to something else.   If I'm going to read something that is several hundred pages long, I would like to enjoy it.  :)

I posted a note on Facebook a couple of weeks ago asking my friends for recommendations of a good novel to read.  Several suggested Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, an author who was totally unknown to me.  When I later posted that I had picked the book up from the library and was about to begin reading it, several more friends commented how much I would enjoy it.  They were certainly right.  

Redeeming Love is a retelling of the story  of Gomer and Hosea (from the Bible) set primarily in California during the  1800's.  The progression of faith in the main character, a young prostitute, really captured my attention and it was hard to put the book down and go to bed at a reasonable hour.  :)    I think this book would be particularly appealing to women since it is a story of unconditional love by a devoted husband but also because it strikes a chord to those who have "fallen" in some way in their past, maybe even their present.     Not necessarily sexually, but you may see yourself in many of the chapters and dialogues.   There were even a couple of scenes in the book where I cried from thankfulness since they reminded me again of  God's grace in my own life.   The author describes the inner feelings and thoughts of each of her primary characters vividly.  These also may seem "familiar".  I highly recommend this book with 5 *****.

From Francine Rivers' website:

Although raised in a religious home, Francine did not truly encounter Christ until later in life, when she was already a wife, mother of three, and an established romance novelist. Shortly after becoming a born-again Christian in 1986, Francine wrote Redeeming Love as her statement of faith.  First published by Bantam Books, and then re-released by Multnomah Publishers in the mid- 1990s, this retelling of the biblical story of Gomer and Hosea set during the time of the California Gold Rush is now considered a classic work of Christian fiction and continues to be one of the Christian Booksellers Association’s top-selling titles; it has held a spot on the Christian bestseller list for nearly a decade...Since Redeeming Love, Francine has published more than 20 novels with Christian themes - all bestsellers- and she has continued to win both industry acclaim and reader loyalty around the globe....

The edition that I read looked like  this:

The book was re-released on its 20th  anniversary and now looks like this:

I'll definitely be reading more books by this excellent author.