The Hope of Refuge

Jesse and Mia have been planning a date night together all week, but unfortunately the weather has other plans. It was to be a repeat of last summer's date night: stargazing on a blanket outside, just the two of them with snacks. Jesse loves to look at the stars, and he wants to introduce Mia to that love as well. We're supposed to get an inch of rain from an especially fierce thunderstorm tonight, so sitting outside to look at the stars isn't going to work.

So tonight I'm picking up a movie from the library about space (we're thinking E.T. or Flight of the Navigator), plus a book from the library with great outer space pix. I'm still stocking up on snacks, and they will have an indoor date tonight, and then if the weather cooperates, they'll watch the stars tomorrow night. Mia is so excited about getting to spend time with her daddy. Just the two of them, one on one, with no distractions. It will be a terrific night for both of them.

The Hope of Refuge by Cindy Woodsmall is the first book in the Ada's House series about the Amish community of Dry Lake, Pennsylvania. Cara Moore is on the run with her daughter Lori from New York City and the stalker who has haunted her life for years. With fragments of a memory from her childhood and an address in her mother's diary, she makes her way to an Amish community hoping that she will find safety and a chance to start over with her little girl. Instead she stumbles into secrets and wounds forty years old with only Ephraim Mast willing to stand up for her at the expense of his position within the community and his family. I thoroughly enjoyed this Amish lit novel because it refuses to be cliched. The Amish, well-known for their forgiveness, are not portrayed as flawless, but as real humans struggling with the consequences of living in a strictly structured society. While much of the story revolves around Cara and Ephraim, Deborah, Mahlon, and Ada are also introduced adding rich texture to this novel and building a foundation for future books in the series. I will definitely be looking forward to the next book!

The winner of The Hope of Refuge was Kathy Henne. Congrats to Kathy! I'll be starting a new contest on Monday for a book women just won't want to pass up.

Today's pic is the last one I'm putting up from our camping trip. It's Jesse and I returning from a relaxing trip in the raft out on the lake. I could have stayed out there for hours!

The Justice Game

The girls and I have the most interesting conversations in the morning driving Molly into work. Somehow today we got on the topic of boyfriends; Molly recently went through a break-up, and we were analyzing where things went wrong. All three of us ended up laughing pretty hard before I dropped Molly off.

After she got out, Mia asked me very seriously just what makes a good boyfriend. We discussed it back and forth on the way home and came to the following conclusions: he should be sweet and thoughtful, make you laugh, love Jesus a LOT, want to make you happy more than anything else in the world, and his hugs should feel nice.

After listening to those qualifications, Mia decided that the boy she's had a crush on for several months didn't qualify as a good boyfriend (keep in mind, the boy has no idea she thinks he is her boyfriend!) because she wasn't sure if he loved Jesus. She's determined to have a different little boy as her boyfriend. This boy always hugged her when she was in preschool (three years ago!) and he was sweet. I pity the poor boy if he's in her class this year, because he'll have a girlfriend and no clue about it! I'm not quite sure how to break the news to her that this decision isn't hers alone. In any case, I'll take the humor and sweetness of Mia's "boyfriends" over the drama and heartbreak of Molly's any day! Anyone have a spare castle tower I can lock my girls up in for the next twenty years or so?

The Justice Game by Randy Singer is another suspenseful courtroom spectacular from the master of the genre. When a beautiful pregnant news anchor is shot on camera by an angry viewer, her husband wants to sue the gun manufacturer for allowing their guns to be sold by a dealer who knowingly sold to felons. He hires Kelly Starling to represent him in a case that strikes fear in the hearts of NRA members across the nation. Across the aisle on the defense is Jason Noble, just two years out of law school and trying his very first major case for the gun manufacturer. But there are mysterious forces working behind the scenes manipulating both attorneys and maybe even going deeper into the case, making the case and story explosive. Singer is a master of suspense, dishing out clues little by little, keeping the reader hooked and barely breathing frantic flipping of the pages. Singer did something revolutionary with this novel: he allowed readers to determine the ending. Months ago, he placed a video on his website with the closing arguments of both attorneys and allowed readers to find for or against the gun manufacturer, vowing to allow their decision to shape the book. This is a hot topic in today's politics, but Singer presents both sides fairly, making the ending a surprise and truly satisfying. Nobody does it better than Singer.

The winner of an autographed copy of The Justice Game is Dr. Keith Elkins. Congrats Dr. Elkins! I'm starting another contest today for Cindy Woodsmall's The Hope of Refuge. It's an Amish lit novel about a New York woman seeking her family roots within an Amish community whose quest exposes secret wounds. If you'd like the chance to win, just send me an email before 10 pm on Thursday, August 6th. I'll announce the winner here and post my review on Friday. Good luck!

Today's pix are of Jesse & Mia while camping. The first one is the two of them watching a movie on the laptop in the tent during one of the rainstorms. He put a blanket over their heads so they could see the screen, and I thought it was too cute not to snap.