Her Mother's Hope by Francine Rivers

Francine Rivers has been one of my favorite authors for a number of years now. I love how she has used her gift of writing to glorify Christ and His work in her life. I often find Christian fiction to be weak in writing and don't like a lot of it. She is one of the exceptions. She is a fantastic writer and would be successful even if she didn't write Christian fiction.
Her Mother's Hope is a bit of a departure for Rivers. It is part one of a saga and a very personal book. It came about as Rivers was looking into her own family history, trying to figure out what caused a rift between her own mother and grandmother. A number of the events in this book are related to her grandmother and mother, but it is not a biography of those women. They inspired the book, but the book is not necessarily their story.
That being said I became so engrossed in reading these women's lives. They are very different women. The first, Marta, we meet as a young Swiss girl determined to escape life under her father's abusive thumb. The journey begins at the beginning of the 20th Century. The second woman is Marta's daughter Hildemare, born after the second world war. She is a much quieter soul from Marta, determined to serve others. My description hardly gives credit to the fabulous stories inside this book. I very much look forward to Her Daughter's Dream, the second book in this saga that will tell the story of the next 2 generations in this family.