have to honestly say, I truly enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, Looking forward to continuing Louise amp Catherine's story, to come. Can I just say that at the end of this book I cried!,
Man I'm crying. This book was a pleasant, quick, and thoroughly addicting read, I don't really know what more I can say without getting into spoilers so I guess that I'll leave it there for now! This is a great book for people who love historical, romance, and dynamic happenings.
The Song of Acadia series is a favorite of mine bittersweet, but absolutely marvolous! The disputed Canadian territory of Acadia,
Catherine Price has just married Andrew Harrow, a captain in His Majestys army.
They are very much in love, but he is almost always away from home, They live on a volatile piece of land, occupied by their fellow British colonists, French Catholics loyal to Louis XV, and Huguenots French Protestants, historically persecuted by, and exiled from, their mother country, who swear allegiance to neither king.
The drums of war echo in every hill and valley of this land,
With Andrew usually absent, Catherine finds herself stuck in a smallminded settlement, full of suspicious, petty matrons who have no wish to associate with her.
Her mother died when she was a little child, her cold, imposing father is in the army like Andrew, and she has no other family.
Between Andrews visits, Catherine obsessively cleans the house, flips through her Bible, and takes long walks in the woods just beyond the settlement.
On one of these walks she bumps into Louise Belleveau Robichaud from the neighboring Huguenot settlement of Minas, Catherine can only speak childish French, Louise only stiff and limited English, But the two young women discover that they are the same age and facing many of the same problems
Louise is also newly married, to Henri Robichaud, whos quickly becoming a community leader despite his youth.
Both of Louises parents are alive and loving she has several siblings and is related to almost everyone in her tightknit village,
Yet the folk of Minas are poor, especially compared to their English neighbors, with each generation fighting desperately against hunger and cold.
They have no love for the French crownthe memory of their martyred ancestors is far too near and dear for thatbut that doesnt mean theyre about to swear allegiance to George II either.
Sensing bad times ahead, Louise has turned to Scripture and nature for solace and guidance, just like Catherine,
As the two keep meeting up and chatting, they learn enough of each others languages to have real conversations, and study their Bibles together.
They trade herbal remedies and husband stories, and share the anxieties and thrills of their first pregnancies, Catherine is embraced by Louises giant family, At first Andrew is quite alarmed to hear that his wife has been taken under French wings, but Louise and Henri adopt him too.
But many in the village of Edward have been spying on the Harrows and accuse them of treachery, As Andrews position is endangered, Catherine hatches a compassionate plan that may still end in tragedy
No content advisory needed, This is one of the cleanest adult books I have ever read, The problems are pretty grownup, but theres nothing in the book itself that a twelveyearold couldnt handle,
Conclusions
When I read Oke and Bunns Acts of Faith trilogy, I enjoyed the story, prose, and characters.
But I thought that the likeable cast acted more like American or Canadian Protestants of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries than the first century Jews and pagan Romans that they were supposed to be.
I figured the authors might be more at home writing about people closer in space and historical time, And indeed, they are!
Its clear that our authors know and love the land of Acadia the charactersCatherine, Andrew, Louise, Henri, Captain Price, Marie, Jacques, and Pastor Jean Ricardseem sprung from its soil.
With the exception of the understandably bitter Captain Price, they are all the sort of people you would want for neighbors, unfailingly generous and eager to help.
I do think that the whole concept might have been even more effective if Louise and her village had been Catholic, The English bore no great love for any French, but they found “Papists” especially disgusting,
Dont misunderstand methe persecution of the Huguenots is probably one of the most shameful chapters in the history of both royal France and Catholicismbut it seems like the only acceptable French characters in Christian historical fiction must be Huguenots, and that annoys me.
There was also a throwaway line in this book about a warmongering, royalist Catholic priest because of course there was eye roll.
Not saying it didn't happen, obviously it did, but since the majority of French Canadians were Catholic I wish they had been represented better, especially since reaching out to people from different cultures is the whole point of the story.
The only other flaw was the twicerepeated reference to a city in the thirteen lower colonies called Washington, Given that Washington DC wouldnt be founded for another thirtyseven years, and George Washington was just a twentyoneyearold surveyor indoes anyone know where the heck this book is talking about when it mentions Washington! I know
its a nitpick, but it was bothering me.
When only three sentences out of a novel bother me, the authors did an excellent job, This was a surprisingly engrossing story that introduced me to a time and place I knew almost nothing about, The prose is good, the characters lovable, the setting deep, and the crisis at the end unexpected and wrenching, Now Im eager to find out what becomes of the Harrows, the Robichauds, and their “beloved land, ” Two young women, one English Catherine and one French Louise, meet in a chance encounter in a meadow situated in the middle of their respective towns on the eve before their weddings.
It is a time of conflict between England and France and the womens' budding friendship could be dangerous for all involved,
There is a lot of history and spirituality intertwined in this story, I developed a great sympathy for both the English and French sides: The French for what they had to endure and the English that were forced to inflict it.
Though the terrible things that come in war time are clear, this story also allows us to see what can come from allowing God to take over and using His strength and power to overcome.
Just a little slow to start out, but by the end I couldn't put it down, A great love story, exploring the love between family, community, husband and wife, mother and child, and the strength of love that can develop between friends.
An amazing inspirational read. After finishing this, I immediately broke out my Bible, wanting to read and learn from the same passages Catherine and Louise read together,
Prepare to not even have the choice to read the sequal: with the way this one ends, you will NEED to, A gentle, faithfilled tale as readers expect of Janette Oke, author of eight sitelinkLove Comes Softly books and a dozen Women of the West.
Not really historical fiction so much as Christian fiction in a historical setting,
If the story suffers at all, it is from oversimplification, The villains are cardboard cutouts, The Stevenages and Hatty are practically caricatures, The Acadians are too innocent, In fact, The Acadaians allied with the Mi'kmaq natives had been fighting the British almost continuallyduring this period, known as Father LeToutre's War.
What Okes gets correct is the ease with which partisans on both sides ascribe the worse motives and intentions to their foes and the best to themselves.
Sadly, this is another of those books whose aim seems to be setting the hook for their respective series, There is little resolution at the end of this book, In fact, the many unresolved issues seem contrived to hook the reader into the next book and the next, etc, There are only five now, but, . .
A good read, .
Read Online The Meeting Place (Song Of Acadia, #1) Formulated By Janette Oke Contained In Paperback
Janette Oke