Lillian has just lost her mother, her second mother. The first one died, along with her father and little sister, when she was a small child. The second one, who raised her with endless compassion and understanding, died when Lillian was a young woman. Her father, distraught, arranged for the two of them to go to his homeland, Ireland, for an extended stay, but then word reached Lillian that her sister might be alive, the sister who was supposed to have died in infancy! Lillian stayed behind to see if this could be true….
Unyielding Hope tells the story of Lillian, her sister Grace, and the orphaned children they meet along the way.
Besides being a heart-tugging story of loss and hope with a little romance tossed in, Unyielding Hope is about adopted and fostered children. As the story unfolds, it portrays some of the abuses linked to the Home Children program that moved British orphans into the colonies. As in all such do-good schemes things can easily go awry. Some of the children were actually kidnapped from their British families and many were mistreated by their adoptive families. Although that sounds discouraging and dismal, this novel is about hope and is an encouragement to love and understand today’s children whose backgrounds are full of loss.
Writing from a family background full of adoption and with Home Children as ancestors, Janette Oke and her daughter Laurel show the reader the importance of love in caring for those who are wounded by loss. In today’s evangelical culture that heavily promotes fostering and adopting children, this message is important to the families involved as well as to all others in their communities.
Besides all that, Unyielding Hope is a great story with memorable characters and lots of gentle excitement along the way. It is not quite like most of Janette Oke’s novels, but her fans and anyone else who enjoys meaningful, gentle storytelling with a Christian message will be happy to read it.
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Related review:
Riding the Rails to Home by Cleo Lampos, a grace-filled children’s story about fostering and adoption.
Disclosure: I received a review copy from Graf Martin and Bethany House and, as usual, am not compensated for this review.