A Voice In The Wind, Francine Rivers

 

A Voice In The Wind
Francine Rivers
520 pages


I am speechless! You know the worst part? Most of what is in this story really happened! All that loss and pain! Francine indeed has a gift from God! Her writing is unique and beautiful. It gave me an odd sense of sadness. Hadassah (one of the main characters) was so strong and faithful. If you read other reviews on this novel, you will notice that almost all of them have something in common. Everyone who reads A Voice In The Wind seems to be distressed. I cannot tell you why. Go and read the book for yourself. If you want me to give away the entire story, you better just stop reading now.  I will tell you one thing (and don't go blabbing it to the world), I have never cried at the end of a book before. Yeah, It was that moving! The plot was a little slow. From a YA view  it was very drawn out, but from a adult view (that I don't have since I'm 13), It seemed strong and well plotted.

It was delightfully terrible, in a good way! I couldn't put it down, no matter how sad I was when Julia refused to see what Hadassah was trying to tell her. The plot was classic, and the story was vibrant. One of those rare Christian Fictions. I have now come to appreciate the pain and torment early Christians endured. Francine never held back. She spoke the truth, and barely left a gory detail out. I can not imagine what was going through her head as she wrote A Voice In The Wind. I would like to thank everyone and have a merry Christmas!




“The city was silently bloating in the hot sun, rotting like the thousands of bodies that lay where they had fallen in street battles.”  With this opening sentence, A Voice in the Wind transports readers back to Jerusalem during the first Jewish-Roman War, some seventy years after the death of Christ. Following the prides and passions of a group of Jews, Romans and Barbarians living at the time of the siege, the narrative is centered on an ill-fated romance between a steadfast slave girl, Hadassah, and Marcus, the brother of her owner and a handsome aristocrat. After surviving the massacre of her family and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, Hadassah is captured and sold to a well-to-do merchant’s family. Brought to Rome, she is pressed into service as a personal slave to hedonistic Julia Valerian.  Hadassah struggles to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and to treat her masters in a manner in keeping with His teachings, but she is forced to keep her religious identity a secret in order to survive.  Confused and alone, she has only her faith to cling to as she tries to subtly bring God into the lives of her captors.  Reckless, impulsive, and villainous, Julia tries to undermine Hadassah at every turn.  But Julia’s brother, Marcus, is a different sort altogether.  Is it possible for a love between Hadassah and Marcus to flourish considering not only their differing stations in life, but also the gap between Hadassah’s unrelenting faith and Marcus’ lack of belief in anything?  Simultaneously, Atretes, a captured soldier from Germania, is forced to become a gladiator. This is the time of Rome's decline and the decadence of a civilization on the verge of self-destruction serves as a powerful backdrop to the Barbarian’s struggle for survival in the arena.