+Book Review+ Debut novelist Brenda S. Anderson gives readers a heartfelt story of redemption in “Chain of Mercy” (Book One: Coming Home Series)

Posted Sunday, 18 May, 2014 by jorielov , , , , 1 Comment

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Chain of Mercy by Brenda S. Anderson

Chain of Mercy by Brenda Anderson

Published By: Winslet Press () 7 April, 2014
Official Author WebsitesSite | Twitter | Facebook | Pin(terest) Boards
Active in Book Blogosphere: Personal Blog
+ Guest Blogger @ Inkspirational Messages

Available Formats: Softcover
Page Count: 360

Converse on Twitter: #ChainOfMercy & #ComingHomeSeries

#ChristianFiction, #InspirationalFiction#ChrisFic, #ChristIndie & #cleanromance

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Acquired Book By: I answered a call to become a member of Ms. Anderson’s Author Street Team which was posted on her blog in March 2014. She accepted me as part of her Street Team, whereby I am one of her early readers who has the opportunity to read her novels a bit ahead of their published release or just after their release date. I received a complimentary copy of “Chain of Mercy” direct from the author herself, Brenda S. Anderson in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.

Fun Stuff for Your Blog via pureimaginationblog.comOn how I know Brenda S. Anderson: Before I was a book blogger, I was a happy-go-lucky blog commenter who loved to visit bookish blogs around the book blogosphere, sharing the joy of reading and blissfully spending time soaking up the booklove the bloggers would knit into their blogs! Through my wanderings in late 2012 and into the early bits of 2013, I stumbled across quite a few author-driven book blogs in both the mainstream and inspirational fiction markets. One author I was pleasantly thrilled to bits to discover was a writer in pursuit of a publishing contract for her novels: Ms. Brenda S. Anderson hailing from Minnesota and of whom has the sweetest personality you’ve ever been graced to find in the blogosphere! Her encouragement on behalf of fellow writers always warmed my heart, as she gets as giddy as I do about upcoming book releases and truly celebrates each milestone another author is experiencing! I felt as though I had found a kindred soul in that regard, as we were both #bookcheerleader(s) before I ever thought to create the tag!

I am disclosing this, to assure you that I can formulate an honest opinion, even though I have interacted with her through her blog as much as I am a member of her Author Street Team. I treat each book as a ‘new experience’, whether I personally know the author OR whether I am reading a book by them for the first time.

Previously I was able to describe exactly why I am drawn into stories knitted together with powerful honesty and an exercise in a faith-based lifepath. Let me copy the paragraph which also applies to why I appreciate Ms. Anderson’s style of writing as she is now firmly in my heart alongside Ms. Lisa Wingate for whom this paragraph was originally on her behalf:

I applaud strong characters who embark on a journey, whether internal, spiritual, or in life. Pieces of the premise reminded me a bit of a Hallmark Christmas film I tend to see during the holidays, starring Richard Thomas, “The Christmas Box”. I love when characters are set up to be in a place they are not intending to stay for a long period of time, yet the place they find themselves is the very place a transformation can occur. That is always powerful to read or watch, because there is such a hearty breath of living truth to the stories! Each of us are walking through life as best we can, growing and learning as we move forward, and never quite knowing when God has an alternative course in mind to restore something to us that has become lost or hidden from view. quoted from my disclosure of connection to Lisa Wingate on my “The Prayer Box” book review

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Book Synopsis:

They forgave him for the accident that killed their son, but he will never forgive himself. Manhattan businessman Richard Brooks was at the top of the world, drunk with success, wealth, and women. Until one disastrous evening, when his world came crashing down. Richard flees to Minneapolis where he repairs ancient boilers instead of solving corporate problems, and he’s determined to live the solitary life he now deserves. But Executive Sheila Peterson has other plans for the handsome custodian. Richard appears to be the perfect match for the no-strings-attached romance she’s after, but she soon discovers that he’s hiding more than the designer suits in his closet.

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Brenda S. Anderson
Author Photo Credit: Portraits from the Heart

Brenda S. Anderson writes gritty, life-affirming fiction that offers hope and reminds the reader they’re not alone. She is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, and is currently President of the ACFW Minnesota chapter, MN-NICE. When not reading or writing, she enjoys music, theater, roller coasters, and baseball (Go Twins!), and she loves watching movies with her family. She resides in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area with her husband of 26 years, their three children, and one sassy cat. Her début novel, Chain of Mercy, Book #1 in the Coming Home series, comes out on April 22, 2014, and Pieces of Granite, the prequel to Chain of Mercy, is scheduled to release on September 16, 2014!

Fun Stuff for Your Blog via pureimaginationblog.comRealistic Fiction by honest portrayal of turmoil:

What I appreciated from the moment I started reading Chain of Mercy, is that I knew that I was going to go through a story where the lead characters would not only have to handle life-altering choices in regards to parenthood but they would have to dig deeper to re-set the internal balance of their soul’s spirit. A person can walk a thin line towards redemption and forgiveness, but surely the worst battle to win is not even the act of accepting grace, but the choice in letting go of what cannot be changed, resolved, or fixed. There are parts of everyone’s past where we might want to go back and opt to do something differently, but the one part about the past is simply that: it is past and done.

Humans have the hardest difficulty to understand that full acceptance of where you are on your lifepath is that you have to acknowledge the threads of your own tapestry. You have to accept each stumbling block, each diversion of your plans, and each wrong choice you made whilst you were doing the best you could at the time in which you erred. No one is perfect on Earth, but the hardest part for any of us is recognising our fragility and our humanity. Being human is the greatest gift we are given, but with it comes a swath of emotions which are not easy to reconcile nor overcome. I would suspect that the circumstances where we might have played a minor role in the outcome to the level that the full outcome was left for someone else to decide is even the worst of all because inside that hour of despair there is not a single thing anyone can do to sway the other opinion towards a different outcome.

Tackling real-life choices such as determining what to do when you arrive at an unexpected pregnancy and a conception of a child out-of-wedlock is a bold choice for any author, but especially I think in Inspirational Fiction as I still stand by what I said in the supplemental Author Interview to this book review. There is another element of real-life conflict that I am not going to disclose as it will reveal too much of the character (Richard Brooks) story arc, and yet, this other element is just as strong of a topic of interest to the former! Not every author would have taken on either of the subject matters, but I always feel not every author would have been the right choice to tell the story. Anderson has a gift for rooting out the heart of what is wrong inside each of her character’s lives, but it is her deft hand to guide the reader and the character through their journey that I celebrated the most within the context of Chain of Mercy!

My Review of Chain of Mercy:

Richard Brooks is a man whose downtrodden soul does not believe he’s warranted mercy to enter his life anymore than happiness. His mind and spirit is bogged down in the remembrance of his mistakes and how those mistakes placed him in circumstances that would allow society to judge him by actions rather than the changes he made in the present. A man with a mind for business gave himself the displeasure of choosing the wrong relationship which cast his attention off his duties as a power player in a firm long enough to be unabashedly dismissed.

In this single act of a life shift moment, he not only weighs the absence of redemption of his past indiscretions but the measure of how far he must go to overcome the guilt he carries in his soul. A man’s emotional baggage and guilt infested conscience can cause far more harm in the long-term than most are willing to admit. His path spilt in half – where two guttingly difficult incidents erupted into his everyday hours causing him the most pain of his soul. The story is half hinged to his present life where he is attempting to rise like a Phoenix whilst part of him is unable to shift out of the past completely living his life through a mess of ashes. The juxtaposition is strongly supported by how the narrative shifts back and forth in the threadings of where Richard is in the present and of whom he was in the past. Including the shifting perspectives of his previous girlfriend with that of his current.

Choices which can alter the course of an individual’s life is one aspect of humanistic turmoil but a choice in which affects three lives at once, where one individual makes the decision without the consult of a second is by far the hardest to reconcile. Especially if the third life is a child not yet bourne, and the second is a father who was never fully given the chance to fill his role in the child’s life nor the mother’s whose only motivation is to abort a life not planned. I cannot even imagine what Richard Brooks went through realising that it wasn’t a violent act of crime which would end the life of his child nor would it be an act of domestic violence which brought a child into his life. No, it would be the choice of whether or not to accept an unexpected blessing at a time in life when other plans had already come into action. Watching Brooks’ anguish over the choice made by his girlfriend which did not match his own heart’s will is the centerpiece of the story. Understanding his perspective of how an act of lust can lead to an act of love (through conception) and then pulled out from under him by a woman whose scorn was lit aflame by selfish preservation is a gutting punch to the conscience.

What is appreciated in the path Anderson took to tell the story is that both sides of the argument on Women’s Rights and the Women’s Right to Choose are explained, identified and explored through different points of view of equal merit. She doesn’t allow you to take sides initially because she wants to be honest in the representation of what real counterpart people of her characters are facing during the same moments where their lives intersect the characters. She even takes a different approach on the topic depending on which character is in the driver seat of the conversation. For this, I applaud her ability to remain neutral as a narrator as oft-times a writer’s own voice can narrate where the direction of the story will head next.

Yet his revelation of his girlfriend’s choice is the tipping stone of what would happen next, as it was a catalyst of where he would take his own actions and what would become of a night lived in shadows. Guilt takes all forms and snakes into our conscienceness if we allow it to overtake our sanity. Richard Brooks found a way to chain irrevocable absolution to his past and thus allowing him the sanction of a living purgatory bent on anguished nightmares of what he could not accept as his own living truth.

The story isn’t a work of judgement but rather an exploration of a living truth: come what may in our lives we are still able to be forgiven even if for choices that we feel are the ultimate sacrifice of receiving forgiveness. No one has the right to judge anyone else, not on the level of where they stand on this topic of political and sociological charging narrative but what can be spoken about is how we choose to handle what life presents us. We can choose our attitudes on how we survive what happens to us in life and we can choose how we will walk forward even when we no longer feel we have the ability to walk at all. That is the strength of the story in Chain of Mercy, in seeing how the fragments can be put back together and how nothing is ever truly lost if we are willing to remain humble.

The hidden beauty of the life affirming message knitted into Chain of Mercy is that all three principal characters (Richard Brooks, Sheila Peterson, and Meghan Keene) are each walking their own path towards self-acceptance, self-forgiveness, and ache for a redemptive measure of mercy and grace none of them believe they deserve. It is how they are all threaded together and how their individual lives are interwoven into the plot that left me wanting to turn each new page to see what was coming along next! Brooks own walk of faith can easily be translucently applied to the other two as each of these three characters reached cross-roads whilst their own lives intersected with each other.

 

A notation on Anderson’s writing style:

What endeared me to the story is Anderson’s compelling way of knitting a realistic story-line set in the modern era and yet denote a hint of a layering of complexity which speaks directly to the human condition to persecute rather than accept self-forgiveness. In the opening chapters, I knew knowingly Richard Brooks was about to embark on one incredible character journey towards self-acceptance and spiritual renewal.

I loved reading the natural world symbolism stitched into the secondary main character Sheila Peterson as it was not only reflective of her unique personality, but a harkening to how we all need to remember to slow down and appreciate what is around us. What I had not realised in those early chapters is that the symbolism of nature and of slowing down was a bit of a foreshadowing of coming events and tides. In regards to Brooks, our past is never an edification of our future nor can our past ever truly shackle us inside its steadfast hold — unless we allow the darkness of bad choices convince us that we are not redeemable from the errors in judgement which besotted our minds with nauseous unease.

I even enjoyed how the flashbacks to the past were represented by text in italics which creatively fit into the regular pace of the story. Sometimes I find flashbacks and/or time slips do not always correlate to the dialogue or the narrative as they can come across as being a jolt out of step. Anderson fuses the flashbacks to the moment in the story which would give the reader the most advantage at connecting with Richard Brooks and the anguish of why he believes he has to live without mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

The reason why I enjoy reading books by Dee Henderson, Julie Lessman, Deeanne Gist, Lisa Wingate, Susan Meissner, and now Brenda S. Anderson is due to the new approach in Inspirational Fiction being rooted in open honesty of real-life circumstances yet grounded in faith, hope, and charity of spirit. These are the authors and women I applaud and seek out as they are the women I could read their back-list and new releases completely enraptured by their stories. They each have their own individualistic style, voice, and choice of time and setting, yet within their stories I breathe in an inspiring breath of calm. The first two authors I mentioned were the foundation of why I wanted to undergo my 70 Authors Challenge, in which I am challenging myself to read 1-5 books by the Inspirational Authors you will find in my sidebar under the challenge countdown badge. I have been slightly delayed in getting my challenge off the ground, but this novel combined with “The Prayer Box” and “A Fall of Marigolds” has inspired me to pick up where I’ve left off! Further details shall follow soon. Stories like these which seek to invigorate and inspire the spirit and heart are always ones that I will fully support.

When Ms. Anderson says she writes ‘gritty fiction’ she is referring to the fact she likes to dig deeper than the superficial layering of telling a story. She likes to go directly into a character’s soul and walk of faith, rooting out their emotional and psychological stability or instability if the case might be, in order to best show the growth and spiritual awakening they need to embark towards. For some it is a spiritual renewal and for others, it’s an awakening because they never gave themselves the proper credit towards understanding God in the first place. She breathes honesty and raw emotions into the context of her stories, and her vision for her characters is realistic humility in recognition of everyman’s faults, fragilities, and sensitivities. She organically digs deeper to tell a more compelling and openly captivating story which pulls you in from page one and does not leave your heart even after the last page is turnt; the story fully absorbed and known. She is most definitely an emerging voice in Inspirational Fiction to keep an eye out for new releases and a finger-tap on interlocking book series!

She maintains the spirituality of Christianity in a gentle way of allowing you to oversee the character going through the motions of returning to a God-centered life which is cross-referenced by light commentary of scriptures and affirmations of God’s grace. It is through the lessons of her character’s actions that the greatest arc of spirituality is found.

Fun Stuff for Your Blog via pureimaginationblog.com This author’s Interview is courtesy of the Author’s Street Team:

Brenda S. Anderson
Author Photo Credit: Portraits from the Heart

For which I am blessed and thankful to be a part of!

Previously I interviewed Ms. Anderson on behalf of her début as an author!

Please visit my Bookish Events page to stay in the know for upcoming events!

{SOURCES: Book cover for “Chain of Mercy”, Author photograph of Brenda S. Anderson, and Book Synopsis were provided by the author Brenda S. Anderson and used with permission. Author Interview badge provided by Parajunkee to give book bloggers definition on their blogs. Post dividers & My Thoughts badge by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets embedded due to codes provided by Twitter.}

Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.

What I’ve shared on Twitter about ‘Chain of Mercy’ or Brenda S. Anderson:

The following is a sampling of the tweeting I’ve done.

Read a convo on Twitter where I recommended “Chain of Mercy” to the author who wrote the incredibly layered “Lemongrass Hope”. (my review of ‘Lemongrass Hope’) | Twitter convo

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

  • Go Indie

About jorielov

I am self-educated through local libraries and alternative education opportunities. I am a writer by trade and I cured a ten-year writer’s block by the discovery of Nanowrimo in November 2008. The event changed my life by re-establishing my muse and solidifying my path. Five years later whilst exploring the bookish blogosphere I decided to become a book blogger. I am a champion of wordsmiths who evoke a visceral experience in narrative. I write comprehensive book showcases electing to get into the heart of my reading observations. I dance through genres seeking literary enlightenment and enchantment. Starting in Autumn 2013 I became a blog book tour hostess featuring books and authors. I joined The Classics Club in January 2014 to seek out appreciators of the timeless works of literature whose breadth of scope and voice resonate with us all.

"I write my heart out and own my writing after it has spilt out of the pen." - self quote (Jorie of Jorie Loves A Story)

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Posted Sunday, 18 May, 2014 by jorielov in 21st Century, A Father's Heart, Abortion, Agnostic (Questioning & Searching or Unsure), Balance of Faith whilst Living, Blogs I Regularly Read, Book Review (non-blog tour), Bookish Discussions, Bout of Books, Brenda S. Anderson's Blog, Contemporary Romance, Death, Sorrow, and Loss, Debut Author, Debut Novel, Geographically Specific, Indie Author, Inspirational Fiction & Non-Fiction, Lessons from Scripture, Life Shift, Mental Illness, Minnesota, Modern Day, New York City, RALs | Thons via Blogs, Realistic Fiction, Romance Fiction, Small Towne Fiction, Special Needs Children, Women's Right to Choose (Health Care Rights), Women's Rights




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One response to “+Book Review+ Debut novelist Brenda S. Anderson gives readers a heartfelt story of redemption in “Chain of Mercy” (Book One: Coming Home Series)

  1. Brenda Anderson

    Jorie – you humble me with this review. Thank you, thank you for your gracious words. I greatly appreciate the deepness of your review, that you understood what I was trying to convey, and that God got points across that I had never intended. I LOVE when He works through us.

    Blessings!
    Brenda

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