Song Stuck on the Brain: Guess Who's Back by Eminem... sorry, they keep playing it on the ad for a kids cartoon and it's stuck.
MY TAKE:
Persian Prince Darius and his Hebrew wife Sarah are back for their second tale in Harvest of Gold. We first met them in Harvest of Rubies as Proverbs 31 literally came to life in a beautiful story of love, respect and self-worth. Darius and Sarah's marriage had found stability but was far from complete. Darius believes himself unable to love Sarah the way she loves him, he also fights his mother's Hebrew heritage and doesn't want anything to do with Sarah's God. The wall's around his heart go as "high as the moon" according to Nehemiah. Sarah loves her husband. She sees a good, kind man in Darius that she longs to know intimately on an emotional and spiritual level, but his rebuffs hurt and now she struggles with her own walls. No matter their personal feelings, they have been sent to find and stop an assassin bent on killing the king. The journey to Jerusalem to help Nehemiah rebuild the walls may be a cover for Darius and his men, but God has bigger plans. He can restore the damage to the heart of Jerusalem as well as in the hearts of Sarah and Darius.
Tessa Afshar has once again created a phenomenal and beautiful story that's not only historically and Biblically accurate, but reaches deeper into the heart and shows a married couple not only finding healing and growth in their own relationship, but in their relationship with God - and how the two work so necessarily hand in hand. Outstanding story.
On a side note, there are two secondary characters, Lysander the Spartan and Roxanna the Persian aristocrat, that have sparked quite a strong interest in one another this time around. I hope this means we'll be reading their story soon as well. I have a feeling any novel by Tessa Afshar is bound to knock my socks off.
Read my reviews of Harvest of Rubies and Pearl in the Sand.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The scribe Sarah married Darius, and at times she feels as if she has married the Persian aristocracy, too. There is another point she did not count on in her marriage-Sarah has grown to love her husband. Sarah has wealth, property, honor, and power, but her husband's love still seems unattainable.Although his mother was an Israelite, Darius remains skeptical that his Jewish wife is the right choice for him, particularly when she conspires with her cousin Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Ordered to assist in the effort, the couple begins a journey to the homeland of his mother's people. Will the road filled with danger, conflict, and surprising memories, help Darius to see the hand of God at work in his life-and even in his marriage?
A hidden message, treachery, opposition, and a God-given success, will lead to an unlikely bounty.
If you'd like to read the first chapter of Harvest of Gold, go HERE.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
TESSA AFSHAR was voted "New Author of the Year" by the Family Fiction sponsored Reader's Choice Award 2011 for her novel Pearl in the Sand. She was born in Iran, and lived there for the first fourteen years of her life. She moved to England where she survived boarding school for girls and fell in love with Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, before moving to the United States permanently. Her conversion to Christianity in her twenties changed the course of her life forever. Tessa holds an MDiv from Yale University where she served as co-chair of the Evangelical Fellowship at the Divinity School. She has spent the last thirteen years in full-time Christian work.
