Redeeming Love

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Michael Hosea. HE ANNOYED ME TO NO END, PEOPLE. I feel like Francine Rivers put herself in Angel's shoes and then created the 'perfect' hero to sweep her off her feet. Michael was unrealistically perfect...and yet awful at the same time. For starters, I HATE how he calls Angel all sorts of different names: Mara (because she's bitter - GUESS WHY, DUDE?), Tirzah, Amanda...ugh. It was like he was trying to create a woman in his mind and kept changing her name to match his ideas of Angel. Super control freakish. Sarah/Amanda/Mara/Tirzah/Angel is a prostitute who was sold into the profession against her will as a child and then raped. Over the years she has become bitter and cold; it's her only defense against her growing despair at sleeping with men she doesn't like in a prison gilded by the gold dust of the Californian mining town she's settled in. On one of her walks, Michael Hosea sees Angel and hears God tell him that this is the woman he is destined to marry. When he finds out what she is, he throws a mini-hissy before pulling up his britches and delivering Angel the news. She is not amused, and rebuffs him multiple times. When he marries her, she's actually unconscious from a beating. It was the 1850’s, and the California gold rush was in full swing. And it wasn’t long before Angel found herself in the midst of chaos.

Yes, I am a Christian but that shouldn't be an excuse for why I should endorse this book and I'm tired of being told I should. This story follows the life of a girl who has believed from her earliest memories that she was a mistake. Not meant to be born. A burden to everyone she encountered. But you know what makes it even worse? A new family shows up in the area and they have this super sweet, awesome, sixteen-year-old daughter named Miriam. Angel and Michael agree that she needs a husband (this is the 1800's, so 16 wasn't too young?) and Michael says "What about Paul?"The truth that ran through that book [ Redeeming Love], absolutely brought me to my knees. I was a changed person after reading that book.” Set in California in the 1950’s during the gold rush, Sarah is working as a high priced prostitute after years being owned since she was just eight years old. She catches the eye of a farmer named Michael. God speaks to Michael and tells him that Angel/Sarah is to be his wife. Michael sets out to wed the closed off Angel and offers her a home and freedom. Anyway, I thought I would have more to say about Angel, but she's just as empty as Michael. She's empty in a different way in that she seems like a self-contained unit piloting her way through the novel, going whichever way she is steered by the various characters. At least she had a career of sorts so she wasn't totally empty. And I didn't mean that as a hooker pun, but once you start denying hooker puns you've already kind of lost the battle.

I told you how I felt from the beginning, but you wouldn’t listen. She should never have been born, Mae, but you insisted on having your own way.” He has no personality, nothing that sets him apart from other men other than he's on the "good" side of the line that ALL characters in this book could be categorized by. Seriously, this really is like an Atari game in that you could easily divide the characters into two camps: good guys and bad guys. And in this case, I don't mean that Jesus is an important figure in the characters' lives or that their belief system informs their decisions. I mean that god literally speaks to the characters. In case you're wondering, god's words are differentiated by being in bold. On the plus, you can just flip through and still catch most of the god stuff. I kind of feel like god would have the graphic design sense to have his own font, but what do I know? But life isn't that easy. It's really not, and perhaps Courtney Love is the one for me, but I don't suspect that she is, and therefore I won't be busting my ass to try and convince her that a Derk/Love wedding is the ultimate fulfillment of god's plan. If it were, the good news is that we could at least all come together on the fact that good is crazy and has very bad taste in Fleetwood Mac covers.

This book is very heavy on the religious themes. There is a case of insta-love (as dictated by Jesus) and God saving a woman from a life of despair and prostitution. This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. ( April 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) The theme of the story is based on the Book of Hosea from the Bible, where God told the prophet, Hosea to marry a prostitute.

God saved you by his special favor when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” Which scene do you feel best shows how Angel was resigned to relying on no one but herself? What events caused her to do so? Why do you think she never cried out to God? Another thing I want to share about this book. It has one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever read. There is a part in the story, right after Angel betrays and abandons Michael (and not for the first or last time) that he takes her to an unknown destination. She is frightened that he’ll hurt her as punishment, and their journey through the dark forest to get where they were going was intense. He ultimately leads them to the crest of a mountain and he points to the moon… yes, that ball of cheese in the sky, and he holds her tightly. After resisting him for some time, she finally stops to look at the beauty around her as the hours pass, the moon descends and the sun begins to set. He doesn’t say much, but he shows her the hope held in the renewal of a new day and the absolute beauty around you if you just stop to look and listen, rather than destroy it or pretend it doesn’t exist; and he simply tells her, “This is the life I want to give you.” *tear...sob* a b c d e Darlington, C.J. "Francine Rivers Interview". titletrakk.com. Archived from the original on July 3, 2009 . Retrieved 2009-09-05. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL ( link) Alex, please. I didn’t see any harm in it. It made it easier. She asked me this morning if she was old enough yet to meet you. She asks me every time she knows you’re coming. How could I say no to her again? I didn’t have theIt's a retelling and retellings are (usually) awesome. I did find the fact that Michael's last name was 'Hosea' to be pretty on the nose (along with Michael drawing direct parallels between the book of Hosea and his situation. *eye roll*). But I still enjoyed the retelling aspect. Angel expects nothing from men but betrayal. Sold into prostitution as a child, she survives by keeping her hatred alive. And what she hates most are the men who use her, leaving her empty and dead inside. The daisies fluttered from Sarah’s hand. She sat down on the ground, careless of her pretty dress. Her heart slowed from its wild, happy beat. Everything inside her seemed to spiral downward with each word. Mama’s voice rose strangely. “Do you know what it’s like for me to walk down the street in this town? You come and go when and as you please. And they know who you are, and they know what I am. No one looks at me. No one speaks to me. Sarah feels it, too. She asked me about it once, and I told her we were different from other people. I didn’t know what else to say.” Her voice broke. “I’ll probably go to hell for what I’ve become.”