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Book Review

Book Review—The Trouble With Nancy

October 9, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Nancy-Tour

Book: The Trouble with Nancy

Author: Chautona Havig

Genre: Christian Historical Romance, Western

Release Date: July 18, 2019

NOTE: I WAS GIVEN A COPY OF THIS BOOK BY THE AUTHOR. ALL OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE MY OWN. LINKS IN THIS POST MAY BE AFFILIATE LINKS

Her reputation precedes her, whether the bad guys realize it or not.

Nancy Harrison has finally stepped out of her prissy box and tried to do something helpful–but did she go overboard in her first self-less act?

She can’t ride, she hates horses, and she’s terrified of being alone. What’s a girl to do?

Join the Pony Express, of course.

When Nancy Harrison’s family receives a tax bill they can’t pay, there’s only one option open to them. Her brother, Lewis, will have to join the Pony Express and earn the money that way.

It would have worked, too, if ruffians hadn’t attacked him and broken his leg.

She doesn’t want to do it, of course, but what choice is there? Lose everything or ride a stupid, smelly horse for a few weeks? Nancy decides that she’ll chop off her hair, take to the dusty overland trail, and prove that she isn’t a “flighty little thing.”

But things go from bad to worse as she discovers that riding astride is worse than sidesaddle—especially when you’re not used to it.

Can’t she just go back home to balls, teas, and the hope of a suitor before her twentieth birthday? Sans her hair, of course, because that’ll entice the fellows. Sigh.

My Thoughts:

There is only one author that I love the writing of so well that I make sure I read everything she writes. That is Chautona Havig. She has a way of taking a common theme and putting a very different twist on it, or of taking an unusual theme, and either way she makes a very believable story with characters you feel like you really know. In The Trouble With Nancy, she has a girl disguise herself as a boy to ride the Pony Express. A girl pretending to be a man isn’t that unusual—but quite often, in a case like that, the girl saves the day by being smarter than the men around her, or something along that line. Not so in this case!

Nancy’s mother had a problem. She had just been informed that there was a tax owing on the home her husband left her when he died, and if the tax wasn’t paid, she would lose her home. Not to worry, said her brother-in-law; he had a plan. Sell the house to him, and move into his house. That was not her plan—but what could she do? Her son Lewis decided to become a Pony Express rider to earn the money to pay the tax—but then he was attacked and injured. What would become of the family now?

Nancy had always been rather a prissy, self-centered girl. She couldn’t ride, she hated dirt and heat. All she wanted was to get married—but she looked like her brother except for her beautiful hair. Suddenly, she knew what she had to do to save the family: Take Lewis’s place as a Pony Express rider! However, she found herself in deep water when things were different from what she expected—and she had to put up with smelly, awful horses that she could hardly stay on top of. Would she survive her trip across the country and back?

This is a beautiful account of a girl learning to put others first. I also love the way she learns about God and relying on Him. The spiritual lessons are woven in so gently that I almost didn’t pick up on them, but a few passages were real gems. After she reached home again, she was telling a friend how she learned to rely on knowing God was with her, but now that she was home, she felt distanced from Him. Her friend’s counsel to her was invaluable

I wouldn’t say this is one of my favorite of Chautona’s books, but it is a good one. It’s clean, light reading, and a fun adventure/mystery story. I read it when I wasn’t feeling good and needed to lay down, and just wanted something easy to read. If you like historical fiction set in the West, you’ll enjoy it.

About the Author:

Chautona Havig lives in an oxymoron, escapes into imaginary worlds that look startlingly similar to ours and writes the stories that emerge. An irrepressible optimist, Chautona sees everything through a kaleidoscope of It’s a Wonderful Life sprinkled with fairy tales. Find her on the web and say howdy—if you can remember how to spell her name.

Video Chat with Chautona:

To purchase your copy, click here.

To visit more of the blog stops on this tour, click here. (Scroll down the page to see the stops.)

To enter a fun giveaway, click here.

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Book Review, Celebrate Lit, Chautona Havig

Book Review—Hashtag Rogue

October 2, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

HashtagRogue-banner

Book: Hashtag Rogue

Author: Chautona Havig

Genre: Fiction / Contemporary / Suspense

Release Date: August 20, 2019

NOTE: I WAS GIVEN A COPY OF THIS BOOK BY THE AUTHOR. ALL OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE MY OWN. LINKS IN THIS POST MAY BE AFFILIATE LINKS.

Something is terribly wrong in The Agency. Again.

Flynne Dortmann: computer specialist extraordinaire. The right arm of every agent in The Agency. And totally untrained for agent duty.

So when no one takes a threat seriously, Flynne does the only thing she can think of.

With money she has no authorization to use, a gun she’s never fired in her hip pocket, and more zip-ties than any agent should be allowed to carry, Flynne takes on protective detail for an unwilling client. #Rogue.

Mark Cho hasn’t had a chance to get used to being Marco Mendina—head of the Eastern US Agency. Not only that, every sign points to someone knowing he isn’t who he appears to be. His agency is in trouble.  His agents may be in danger, and with an office girl gone rogue, deciding what problem to tackle first is a problem in itself.

Not to mention, he misses his office assistant with her emoji-speak, killer tech skills, and sharp instincts.

My Thoughts:

When you enjoy a series of books, you’re always thrilled to see a new one come out. I have enjoyed all four of The Agency Files, so I knew I would like Hashtag Rogue as well—and I did! Not many, if any, loose ends from other books were tied up, although more were created, but the story within this book is complete, and it was great fun to get to see Flynne in action in her own book.

Flynne was the office girl for The Agency. She did a wonderful job of keeping things running smoothly—despite the way she talked. Her constant emoji-speak of things that were totes adorbs, or puffy-hearting other things, had grown on Mark, but he wasn’t ready yet to believe her when she saw signs that Erika was in danger. What could Flynne do about it but take off on her own to save Erika, even if she didn’t know the first thing about protection, and didn’t have any sort of a plan. Would Keith be able to reach them in time to save the day?

Flynne and Erika left Rockland and found a place to hide, but Erika had to put up with watching Flynne flirting with the caretaker of the place. Then, they had to run from there—and found themselves in even more danger. Meanwhile, the Agency itself seemed to be in danger. Who was trying to take it down, and why?

Don’t try to read this book too fast. You’ll miss a lot. At the same time, it’s a hard one to read slowly, because the constant danger makes you want to keep turning pages. There are a lot of characters and plot lines going on at the same time, and trying to keep them all straight was a bit difficult. I loved the way the characters all interacted with each other, though, and all those plots worked together to tell a bigger story. I was glad to see Keith back, and his faith growing again. Erika’s faith is growing in this book, too, and even Mark is starting to lean more towards God. On the other hand, this is rather a rough story, with more violence in it than I normally like. At the same time, it’s a very clean story, with rough language referred to but not printed (some of the ways in which we are told about this language is quite hilarious!). I highly recommend this book, and the whole series, if you like mysteries.

About the Author:

Chautona Havig lives in an oxymoron, escapes into imaginary worlds that look startlingly similar to ours and writes the stories that emerge. An irrepressible optimist, Chautona sees everything through a kaleidoscope of It’s a Wonderful Life sprinkled with fairy tales. Find her on the web and say howdy—if you can remember how to spell her name.

Read an Excerpt:

Erika ordered her eyes to open. They declined the offer. Once more, and with as much of a mental drill sergeant tone as she could muster, she demanded the possibility of sight.

Neither eyelid gave so much as a twitch.

Resigned, she then tried to ascertain the reason for said incorporation by the lids of her eyes. Her brain, too, had gone AWOL. White noise replaced rational thought, grit, replaced natural eye moisture, and if the sensation coming from her tongue could be trusted, she’d transformed into a cottonmouth.

Except that I can’t slither. I know I can’t.

That, Erika decided, was improvement. It just had to be rational thought. Oh, God please.

A question arose. Do I pray? The moment she asked, Erika nodded—inwardly, anyway. I do. Not sure since when… maybe that’ll come next.

Clarity formed when a voice broke through what might or might not have been consciousness. “Oh, thank whatever you’re supposed to thank—don’t want to be, like, totes offensive if I’m not supposed to say, ‘God,’ but I was afraid you had flat-lined.”

“Flynne?”

“Yay! She lives!”

Why do I feel like that’s supposed to be “He lives?”

“So, can you sit up if I help you?”

Bile churned in Erika’s gut. Her eyes felt like they bugged, but she wasn’t even confident she could see anymore. Then Flynne’s purple, green, and blue hair came into view. She glared, wrestling her mouth into contortions and fighting back the urge to vomit. “Please!”

It came out more like, “Mmmweeeeeffff”

“Can’t understand you.” Flynne’s eyes narrowed.

Perspiration formed on Erika’s forehead, neck, and in every other uncomfortable place. Cold, clammy perspiration.

“Do you promise not to scream if I take this off?” She tapped the tape.

Erika just nodded with vehemence that nearly lost her what breakfast she’d eaten.

Again, Flynne’s eyes grew even narrower than the first time. “Okay…” Eyes wide, the girl ripped off her high-top converse and pulled a sock from her foot. “So help me, if you scream, I’m stuffing this in your mouth—supes gross.” She wriggled it for effect—just in case Erika didn’t catch the utter disgustingness of it.

Once more, Erika nodded and pleaded. You’re so going to regret threatening me with that.

If Satan wanted to recruit torturers to relieve demons, Flynne would have been perfect for the job. She worked the tiniest corner of the duct tape free. Erika choked and grimaced. She jerked her head hard to the right. Flynne stared. Once more, she jerked it.

“You want me to rip it off? That’ll hurt!”

But the moment Flynne said “rip,” Erika began bobbing her head fast enough to ensure she drowned in vomit within seconds. Flynne had mad ripping skills, however. In less than three seconds, the tape jerked free—and so did the contents of Erika’s stomach.

All over Flynne’s bare foot and Converse shoes. The moment she stopped heaving, Erika glared up at the girl and moaned, “That’s payback for this.”

The battle of the glares began. Flynne broke the silence that followed first. “If you weren’t Keith’s girlfriend and religious, I’d swear at you. Consider yourself cussed out.” Before Erika could choose between the half-dozen scathing remarks fighting for preeminence, Flynne froze. “Wait. You called me, like, every name in the book. I thought you religious people couldn’t do that!”

The churning began again. “I did?” If she could have gagged, she would have. If she could have puked she might have. “Do I want to know what I said?”

Without hesitation, Flynne rattled off every inappropriate word Erika had spent the last few months working to eradicate from her vocabulary. “Then you got all sesquipedalian on me.”

“Sesquatch-what?”

Flynne turned a little green herself as the stench of partially digested breakfast assaulted her olfactory system. “Sesquipedalian.” At Erika’s doubtful look, Flynne went into action. She removed her other shoe, disappeared outside, returned with clean feet and ready to do business. “For your information it’s a big word that means, ‘a big word.’”

“No offense, Flynne, but you aren’t exactly known for your erudition.”

The girl gave a fine imitation of a puppy cocking its head—a blue, green, and purple-haired puppy. “That’s not one of the word-of-the-day words I’ve had. C’mon… let’s get you cleaned up and inside.”

She peeked her head outside, scanned the area, and looked back at Erika. “No one’s in the neighborhood that I can tell, but you’d be smart not to go all screamo on me or anything that would call the cops.”

“And why’s that?”

Flynne tried to be surreptitious, but Erika caught her eying a white Camry on the other side of the garage before answering, “Because I can get you out of here before they arrive, and you don’t want to be awake when I’m driving fast.”

Something deep in her gut—something other than the renewed churning that hinted she might lose what was left of the contents of her stomach—hinted that Flynne might not be exaggerating. But I’m not going to let her know that. It’d serve her right if I puked all over that car. What’d she do with hers, anyway?

After throwing a dark look at her, Flynne stalked from the garage and returned a few minutes later with a roll of duct tape slid over her arm like a grunge bracelet gone wrong. “You’re already in hot water with the Big Guy for your potty mouth, so don’t add lies. Stuff it or stick it?”

“If you tape my mouth and I vomit, you’ll be responsible for my death. Just sayin’.”

“Then don’t make noise.” Flynne glared at her. “I’m just trying to help here. Just sayin’.”

Didn’t know you had that much grit. The woozy, stomach-revolting-on-every-side feeling returned in time for Erika to make a decision. “I’m not going to scream. I don’t want to puke in a cop car, either. But if you don’t get me inside where I can be comfortably horizontal with a bowl by my side, I’m going to puke all over you and enjoy every second of it.” Her stomach rumbled. Mostly.

That perked Flynne up for reasons Erika couldn’t fathom. She hooked her tape-free arm under Erika’s and said, “Then let’s go, Kokomo!”

That’s way too old-school—like fifty years old school. A vague memory poked through the cloud cover of her mind. “I think Keith gave me vitamins or drugs to combat after-effects. I think I need those.”

Not until Flynne had her tucked up on a couch in the family room, a bright red mixing bowl on the floor beside it and a glass of water on the coffee table, did Flynne bother to answer. “Sorry. I was freakazoiding when I left the Agency and just got what I thought I needed to get you safe. I’m not trained for this.”

“Then call Keith. He’ll come. He is trained, and he’ll take care of me.”

Even as she said it, Erika knew it was futile. Flynne had it in her head that this was necessary. So, she could wait. The Agency would take care of her job, her bills, and Flynne could learn that being an agent wasn’t a good career choice. Everything would be just fine for a few days—until Flynne got over herself.

The first epithet marched across the stage of her mind, stepped up to the mic and tapped it, ready to let loose. Erika groaned.

As if propelled by itself, the red bowl appeared at her lips. “I’m sorry! I don’t know what I’m doing. The stuff these guys have to do—totes amazeballs!”

“I was groaning at my language. Can you be quiet for a minute or two while I pray? It’s totes impossible to take repentance seriously when you’re puffy hearting your cray-cray amazeballs.”

“Coolio. Sure thing.”

I just lost fifty IQ points. I know it. Let’s start with prayers for rejuvenated little gray cells and move onto repentance after that. Okay, Lord?

To purchase your copy, click here.

To visit more of the blog stops on this tour, click here. (Scroll down the page to see the stops.)

To enter a fun giveaway, click here.

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Book Review, Celebrate Lit, Chautona Havig

What We’re Reading—June 2019

June 19, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Note: Links in this post may be affiliate links, and if they are, they will benefit Esther.

As usual, we have been reading quite a variety of books! Since we finished Who Am I? from Apologia’s Worldview series, we only have three stories every morning. We start out with a story from Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories; we’re currently in Volume 10, so I’ll soon have to find another Bible Story book to read from. We also read a couple of pages from David Macaulay’s Cathedral—what a fun way to learn a little of medieval history! For American History this week, we have been reading First Heroes for Freedom. It’s quite an interesting story about the Battle of Rhode Island, from the perspective of a teenage slave boy. We’re about 75% of the way through now, and it’s been good so far.

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After lunch, we read four books each day. Right now, we’re reading Laura, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Donald Zochert. We just finished the Little House Series, and decided we wanted to know what her life was really like. It’s been very interesting to compare the biography with what she chose to tell young readers about her life! Our next book is The Heart Changer, by Jarm Del Boccio. It’s a retelling of the story of Naaman’s servant girl, from the time of the kings of Israel. It is very well done—watch for my full review in a few weeks! After that, we read for about 10 minutes from Kayaks Down the Nile. I borrowed this book from my mother when we were in Michigan in January; she recommended it also when I asked if I could borrow The Ra Expeditions. It’s a fascinating account of three men kayaking down the Nile River in the 1950s. We’re really enjoying it—but I don’t think I’d enjoy a trip like that! Too many crocodile and hippos, not to mention the tipsy kayaks. Our last book each afternoon is Encounters With Animals. This is the only book by Gerald Durrell that I can recommend, unfortunately. All the others I’ve read by him feature immorality and a lot of evolutionary thinking.

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So, that’s what we are reading aloud at the moment! We’ve read quite a few other books over the course of the past month, too. The two afternoon books we read were Treasure in an Oatmeal Box and A Flame Forever Bright. The first of these was one I found at a secondhand shop when we were in Ohio in February. I had seen the book advertised about 25 years ago, but never read it. What a gem! This story is about a girl coming to terms with having a mentally handicapped brother, and learning to love him. The ending caught us by surprise, though. The second is about Dirk Willems, probably the most famous Anabaptist martyr from the 16th century. It is told from the viewpoint of his (fictitious) younger sister, and is very good. I did learn one thing from reading these two books—Little Miss, though she is only four, is listening to and comprehending a lot of what I read!

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We have read quite a few books for history in the mornings, as well. Obviously, we are still working through the American Revolution. Danbury’s Burning and Sybil Ludington’s Midnight Ride both tell the story of a teenage girl who rode much farther than Paul Revere, through bad weather, and yet is hardly known! Buttons for General Washington was a very interesting story of a family who spied for the Revolutionary cause. In Aaron and the Green Mountain Boys, a little boy learned that he could be of help even if he didn’t go out with the militia! Joseph Brant was an interesting biography of an Indian who worked for the British during the Revolution. We loved Saving the Liberty Bell—what fun pictures! John Paul Jones, Fighting Sailor was quite an interesting story, but we didn’t appreciate the battle scenes. One of them was fun; in his first sea battle, he outwitted the British Navy and saved an American ship, with no one getting hurt in the slightest. We also got to read The Winter At Valley Forge again.

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So, that’s what I’ve been reading to the children. I’ve also read several books for myself. The ones that really stood out were The Pink Bonnet and Blessing Bentley. The Pink Bonnet is historical fiction about a woman who made a career, from the 1920s-1950s, of stealing children from the Memphis, Tennessee area and then selling them to the highest bidder. It was heartbreaking, and very hard to put down, as a mother and a lawyer tried to solve the mystery of what was happening. Bentley is an amazing new book by Chautona Havig. I found it very refreshing to read a romance that didn’t follow a formula! There are so many good things to think about in this book—I can’t say enough good about it! At the moment, I’m reading The Second Yes, a collection of five interlinked books which includes Something Borrowed, Someone Blue, which I mentioned in the last post about what we’re reading. I’m on the fourth book right now. I enjoyed Something Borrowed, and am enjoying this one; the first and third weren’t quite my cup of tea; but I’m looking forward to the last one, which will tie them all together. It’s by an author I always enjoy. Another book I read recently was The Deepest Waters. Even though I pretty well knew what the ending would be like, there were a lot of surprises along the way, and unexpected twists in this book based on a true story from the 1850s.

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Filed Under: Activities at Home Tagged With: Book Review, Books, Homeschooling

Product Review—CrossWired Science

April 17, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I wasn’t overly excited about reviewing CrossWired Science when the opportunity was presented, but we watched all the sample videos before I made the final decision, with input from my four school boys. We all agreed that the videos were fascinating—and one of them answered a question I had vaguely wondered about before (how do animals get their Vitamin D?). We decided to request this online program for review and give it a try. Am I ever glad we did! I am loving it! The children are enjoying it, as well, some more than others.

Product Image 1Product Image 2

We have been given access to both of the global topics that CrossWired Science has come out with so far, Sound, and Fluid Dynamics. So far, we have mainly focused on Fluid Dynamics, since the majority vote from the boys was for that one, although I would like to go through Sound as well. It has been fascinating to learn about how air and water work. We have watched videos on a number of subjects that all have to do with air and water movement. For example, one was about Dog Slobs & Cats. It showed, in great detail, how both animals lap water and why dogs make a mess while cats are tidier (although our cat manages to splash milk all around her dish, somehow). After we watched that, Mr. Imagination checked out our cats’ tongues to confirm that they have the texture that the video said they did. Other videos talked about dolphins, boxfish, penguins, nose aerodynamics (now we know why our cats are so lazy!), carburretors, and the alulas on bird wings (another lifelong mystery cleared up for me), among other topics. Each video has a worksheet with questions from the video, as well as a true/false online quiz. We have not done any of these worksheets, because they were not available when we started the course, but have done the quizzes. There were a few discrepancies between the quizzes and the videos; this is a brand-new course and is a work in progress, so I expect to see these problems resolved soon. (It’s very good already, but once these issues we noticed are corrected, I believe this site will be great.)

Worksheet #1

Besides the videos, there are many other suggested activities. There are a lot of options for experiments. I somehow neglected to get any pictures of my boys trying out the matchhead rockets, but they spent several days playing around with them. They had loads of fun building and shooting off these miniature rockets, and Mr. Intellectual discovered a new-to-us YouTube channel full of fun experiments (I think it includes a fair number of explosions, which he loves!). They also tried out the paper airplanes and figured out how to make a loop of paper fly very well across the room.

One page suggests many books to read. We have a few of them, so we added them into our read-aloud day. I was happy to be reminded to read The Great Dinosaur Mystery and Dry Bones and Other Fossils with my boys. The wide range of books that are recommended would make a great library. They suggest several biographies by Janet & Geoff Benge, one of which (Alan Shepard) we read in the past year. They also recommend Creation magazine, so I told Mr. Intellectual to spend his science time one day summarizing what he had been telling us about from the most recent issue the day before.

Right now, we’re working our way through the Gold Dig section. This is six pages about bones. The first page had a video and a quiz; we’re currently on the next page, which talks about all sorts of subtopics having to do with bones—just look at this outline!

Bones #1There is a worksheet which goes along with this. Each day, I’m reading through about three sections of this page with Mr. Diligence, Mr. Sweetie, and Mr. Imagination, and we answer the questions that go along with those sections. It takes about 15 minutes to do that much, and that’s about all the time they can handle doing something like this, since we usually don’t get to it till after lunch and they are ready to run outside! Mr. Intellectual is doing this part by himself, since he is a strong reader. One thing we really enjoyed about this page was a photo of the International Space Station. What we really loved was that New Zealand, and the top part of our island, was in the background! It’s a very clear photo, and we could almost see where we used to live!

I’m also looking forward to learning about sound. So far, all we have done there is to watch one video, which was about the larynx and the vocal cords. It looks like the Global Topic on Sound is laid out similarly to the one we’re working on. All the Digging Deeper pages have something to do with sound, in humans as well as the animal world. We had started the year using the same series of science textbooks we’ve been using and loving for the past several years, but I’m thinking we’re going to finish what we want to use in CrossWired Science before we go back and finish that book. There is so much to love in this course! We’re enjoying the variety of ways to learn about the topic, and we love the way it points to the Creator. One thing we’ve noticed is that the videos don’t actually mention God, but what we read on the screen does. The videos do talk about how things are designed to work the way they do, very definitely giving glory to God if you think about it a little. I am very slow to buy an online program for school, but this is one that is worth the price they ask for it, even for us. I like it and am very glad we were put on the review.

If you are interested in trying out this fascinating website, here is a coupon code that will take $5 off every order—no matter how many times it is used: loh12.

One thing I had a bit of trouble figuring out is how to schedule CrossWired Science. There is so much information here, in a variety of styles, but it’s not laid out in lessons, although I have heard that there is a suggested schedule somewhere on the website—I haven’t found it myself. The intention is that a student will choose what appeals to him, and work through most or all of each project (Fluid Dynamics is one project) in any order. The way it’s set up, you click a button labeled “Finish Quiz” at the bottom of each page, and then you can tell by looking at a bar at the top of each page how many more pages there are to complete. All ages can do this course together. Of course, older children will go more in-depth than younger ones, but even Little Miss, who is four, enjoys the videos. Also, there are two levels. We’re using the First-Timer course, but for those who have been through it once as a younger child, they can do it again using the Second-Timer course. I haven’t looked at it yet, so I can’t say how it is different. Here are screenshots of the menu on the Lesson Page. You can see that they have made it easy to tell which lessons are completed.

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Each project is intended to be a full Science curriculum for a month or two. The plan is to have enough projects up to provide six years of Science! I’ll be very interested in following the progress of this course to see how it develops. Of course, not only can it be used as a stand-alone curriculum, it could also be used as a supplement to any other science curriculum. Be sure to click on the banner below to see what the rest of the 80 reviewers have to say—I’ll be checking out some of those reviews, because I’m curious to know what others think of this!

Sound, and Fluid Dynamics {CrossWired Science Reviews}
Crew Disclaimer

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Book Review, Homeschooling, Science

Book Review—Eve in Exile and the Restoration of Femininity

February 6, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

I wrote this review for our book reviews website, but it will be awhile till it is published there, so I decided to put it here for a couple of months first. This book is good.

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Wow. Eve in Exile is an amazing book. I’ve rated it as one of my top ten for the year. I had never even heard about it before my daughter heard of it from a friend and got it while it was free on Kindle. I was in the mood for a nonfiction read at that point, so downloaded it onto my Kindle (we share accounts), and started it. I could hardly put this book down! No, it’s not a mystery or even really a story, but it certainly caught my attention and held it.

There are four sections to this book. After the introduction, which discusses the confused, muddled-up mess women find themselves in today, in which people don’t even seem to know what gender they are, the first section talks about two different ways women react to this mess. Some women virtually live a pretend life, trying to go back in time to when things were different. Others spend their lives chasing after fulfillment in the ways society tells them they will find it.

The second section was fascinating to me. It traces the history of feminism from the earliest roots of today’s movement, in the mid-1700s, to the present. It was amazing to realize that, from the very earliest days, the feminists were trying to destroy the family structure. They hated marriage, and they hated that men could have sexual freedom, while women had to deal with the consequences. That, of course, led to birth control and abortion. Another point that stood out to me was the constant anger and discontentment among the feminists. They were never happy with what they had, but always wanted more and more. One quote I marked says, “Whenever someone begins issuing demands to the universe about what is owed to them, we ought to be dubious. This is fundamentally at odds with biblical teaching on what is an obedient (and effective) response to injustice.” The author goes on to point out Christ’s reaction, and how He told His followers to respond, when things were not done fairly to us. After you read this section, you will never think of the feminist movement in the same way again.

The third section is the opposite of the second one—it is positive! What are we, as women, designed for? What is our role? We are to subdue and fill the earth, be a help to our husbands, and glorify God! Another quote: “Eve was created to help, not to be the commander in chief. Adam was not brought into the picture to be her sidekick, and she was not brought into the picture to live an independent life….” These four chapters are full of amazing thoughts. I appreciated this quote, which concludes this section, as well: “It’s worth noting, since conservatives have been known to miss this, that nowhere in Scripture are women, as a group, required to submit to men, as a group. Women are commanded to submit to their own husbands as to the Lord, nowhere are we required to submit to “men.” The author finishes with a couple more sentences about the beauty of true submission.

Section four, then, gives practical ideas for carrying out our role. Throw yourself into your job—caring for your husband, children, and home! Determine that you will learn to be good at what you have to do anyway, and challenge yourself “to use the task that’s been put in front of you as a way to learn more about God and the breathtaking world He has put us in….”Change the world by making the good attractive! Be the glory of your husband, and in doing that, bring glory to God. Wow. So much to live up to, to think about and put into practice.

I was blown away by the wisdom in this book. It is one I believe every Christian woman, married or single, should read. Reading this book has opened my eyes to some of the ways I have been affected by the culture that surrounds all of us, and given me a renewed vision for my life as a wife and mother. This is a book I want on my shelf in print so I can share it with other women! If you are discouraged or discontented with your role as a Christian woman, read this book and be encouraged.

WARNING: The author is quite frank about the sexual revolution.

Buy your own copy here.

I received no compensation for this review. I simply appreciated the book so much I wanted to share it. Links may be affiliate links. 

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Book Review

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