It is always fun for me, as a south Alabamian transplanted north to Kentucky, to read books with "southernisms" that are realistic. In this book is a character who likes okra and knows that collard greens are improved by the addition of vinegar; another character is named "Junior Jackson" and even the people who work with him every day don't know his "real" name. This only happens in the REAL south. These go beyond the typical "ya'll" that some authors throw into a story to give it what they think is a good southern flavor.
Water's Edge is about a young attorney, Tom Crane, who went from Atlanta to his small town home town to close down his father's law practice shortly after the father's unexpected death. What should be a fairly simple, though tedious, task turns into a plunge down a slippery slope of questions that don't seem to have answers. Why is there an empty file folder for the client who was drowned at the same time as his father? Was that man, in fact, a client or just a fishing buddy? If he was a client why was there no written record of an agreement between them or of any sort of payment made? Was this "client" involved in illegal activities? Was he trying to involve Tom's father? Or, could there possibly be any truth to the "hints" of the District Attorney who seems to indicate that he believes Tom's father may have murdered the "client" before he, himself, drowned? This, of course, was absolutely impossible considering the kind of man Tom knew his father to have been. But, was he really that man?
Add into the mix the following: Tom losing his job during the meeting when he thought he would be offered a partnership in the firm, Tom's girlfriend "dumping" him unexpectedly AND taking his cat with her, an aged uncle who has a study that is off limits to Tom, a former girlfriend who wishes she had married Tom instead of his best friend, a near death experience during a rafting excursion, and apparent rope burns on the neck of one of the drowned men, and you have puzzles enough to keep Tom's head spinning as he tries to find answers to the many questions that keep him searching when what he really wants to do is just close everything up and go back to Atlanta. Then there is the day Tom spends the morning reading his father's Bible and taking notes; and he comes away with a different perspective than he ever expected to have. What difference will that make on the issues?
I've enjoyed every Robert Whitlow book I've read and this one didn't disappoint me either. Just released two weeks ago, Water's Edge is a pleasant addition to his other books. There are mystery and intrigue, and a plot with enough twists and turns that I didn't have it figured out by the end of the second chapter. :-) It was written in such a way that, although I guessed and wondered about a couple of things, the ending was kept unknown until almost the very end. I like that.
If you enjoy a good murder mystery with more mystery than murder you'll enjoy Water's Edge. The plot is believable (if "professional" people really do sometimes kill other people in cold blood in order to hide a crime they have committed). The characters are realistic. The "good guys" demonstrate a high standard of morality, integrity, and ethics in their personal as well as professional lives. They struggle with some issues, including sin sometimes. but they do struggle instead of making excuses to do anything they can think to do. The Christians in the story demonstrate walking with Christ and making godly decision without being preachy; and they show that there is more to the Christian life than just tacking a Bible verse onto whatever we do or say.
So, if you want murder without gore, mystery without terror, Christians without hypocrisy, integrity winning over deception, a little romance, a plot with various legal ramifications all thrown into a story that honors Jesus' name and demonstrates a life that is dependent on His leading, you have found just what you want. Robert Whitlow is one of four authors whose books I grab the minute they hit the shelf. Water's Edge is, as I said, his latest. It is a well written, engaging story that kept my attention from the first page to the last. I hope you'll read it and enjoy it as much as I did.
Happy Reading :-)
Monday, August 8, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Embracing Your Second Calling
Have you reached that "certain age" in life? The age when your children are grown, or nearly so. Are you looking at your life and asking questions such as: "Is this all GOD has planned for me?" "What am I going to do with the rest of my life?" "What can I do that is meaningful and will be of value long after I have left this earth?" If you are a woman who is asking herself these or similar questions, Embracing Your Second Calling by Dale Hanson Bourke may offer the motivation and inspiration you are seeking.
The author was a corporate "player" who thought nothing of zipping from one coast to the other for an early morning meeting and then zipping back for a family event that evening. She was high energy and lived a fast paced life juggling work, husband, children, home, church in order to be successful in all things. Until one day when she woke up and asked herself why she was living that way and was that all there was to life. So she took an early retirement and from there she began the search for meaning in life, as it were. She took other jobs and a couple more retirements over the next few years, always going toward a slower pace of life. Sort of. LOL Frankly, her slowest day would probably make me dizzy.
Maybe you, as I did, are thinking this book won't have anything to offer you because you have never been a high power anything and if you slow your pace of life anymore someone may call the funeral home. I admit that it took me a while, and a couple of re-starts, to finish this book; mostly because I thought it would be wasting my time since I'd never been "success" oriented in the way she was. But I like to finish what I start so I finally buckled down and did it. I'm glad I did. What Ms. Bourke has to say is good for anyone; young or old, high energy or lethargic, success oriented or content to just get by.
Some of the things Ms. Bourke focuses on in Embracing Your Second Calling include prayer, relationships, and getting beyond the "titles" by which you've been identified to this point in life. She looks at the life of Naomi and contrasts her worldly failures and spiritual successes with what we value in our lives today, bringing a number of things into better focus than they seem to be when see them through our smudged "world view". She talks about the importance of prayer being the foundation of everything we do. But she presents a picture of prayer that is more practical, I think, than we usually see because it doesn't involve setting aside hours each week to bring our "shopping list" (my words, not hers) to GOD. She discusses the importance of relationship, both friendships and mentoring, in the lives of older women. She also talks about dropping old "baggage" from the past and being willing to accept a new "identity" for the future in order to let GOD make us who He intended all along that we should become.
Ms. Bourke's writing style is simple, almost conversational. She looks at the facts of Naomi's life and considers possible motives but does so without going into a deep study of Biblical languages, etc. She tries to look at life and our choices in life based on an eternal value system. But she does this without being preachy or critical about the things she has left behind. I am amazed that she could accomplish this. :-) Reading this book felt almost like talking with an old friend whose heart was knit to my own.
Embracing Your Second Calling isn't a book to tell you that one life style is right and another is wrong. Her focus is on priorities but without focusing on a list. For Ms. Bourke this meant simplifying her life; although, as I indicated earlier, her "simplified" life still looks pretty hectic to me. Rather than saying, "Do this" or "Don't do that" she focuses more on values. Without criticizing anyone's choices, past or present, she gently encourages those eternal values I mentioned earlier. Most of the women she talked about in the book lead lives that are much closer to the corporate executive end of the spectrum than the stay at home mom end where I have lived. This is the main thing that almost kept me from finishing the book. However, she did such a good job of presenting the principles she was sharing that such differences didn't really matter and were hardly noticeable.
So, I said this book is good for women in any walk of life; and that is true because those principles are valid in all our lives. However, it is really written for the woman who is in a place to make changes in her life or who is having changes thrust upon her, for whatever reason. Ms. Bourke suggests that there are things more important than "success" or "winning" and that we should be making our life decisions based on those more important principles. If you are a young woman with children to care for and think you aren't in a place to make changes in your life, you can still find inspiration in this book. It won't encourage you to put your children in day care and go into the workforce; what it will do is encourage you to begin to build those important activities into your life NOW so you don't have so many changes to make when you hit those middle years. If you are already in the middle years, as I am, it doesn't criticize what you've done or are doing. The books isn't really activity focused so much as it is attitude, heart, and eternity focused. It encourages us to stretch ourselves to the point where we find ourselves outside our natural comfort zones. That will look different for each of us.
Are you ready to give GOD control of what you do and where you go? Are you ready to be stretched to places you never thought you would be? Are you ready to look at life from a perspective that doesn't value success more than being who GOD made you to be? Are you ready to be the woman that GOD made you to be, the woman He has been shaping through all your life this far? I heartily recommend Embracing Your Second Calling.
Happy Reading :-)
The author was a corporate "player" who thought nothing of zipping from one coast to the other for an early morning meeting and then zipping back for a family event that evening. She was high energy and lived a fast paced life juggling work, husband, children, home, church in order to be successful in all things. Until one day when she woke up and asked herself why she was living that way and was that all there was to life. So she took an early retirement and from there she began the search for meaning in life, as it were. She took other jobs and a couple more retirements over the next few years, always going toward a slower pace of life. Sort of. LOL Frankly, her slowest day would probably make me dizzy.
Maybe you, as I did, are thinking this book won't have anything to offer you because you have never been a high power anything and if you slow your pace of life anymore someone may call the funeral home. I admit that it took me a while, and a couple of re-starts, to finish this book; mostly because I thought it would be wasting my time since I'd never been "success" oriented in the way she was. But I like to finish what I start so I finally buckled down and did it. I'm glad I did. What Ms. Bourke has to say is good for anyone; young or old, high energy or lethargic, success oriented or content to just get by.
Some of the things Ms. Bourke focuses on in Embracing Your Second Calling include prayer, relationships, and getting beyond the "titles" by which you've been identified to this point in life. She looks at the life of Naomi and contrasts her worldly failures and spiritual successes with what we value in our lives today, bringing a number of things into better focus than they seem to be when see them through our smudged "world view". She talks about the importance of prayer being the foundation of everything we do. But she presents a picture of prayer that is more practical, I think, than we usually see because it doesn't involve setting aside hours each week to bring our "shopping list" (my words, not hers) to GOD. She discusses the importance of relationship, both friendships and mentoring, in the lives of older women. She also talks about dropping old "baggage" from the past and being willing to accept a new "identity" for the future in order to let GOD make us who He intended all along that we should become.
Ms. Bourke's writing style is simple, almost conversational. She looks at the facts of Naomi's life and considers possible motives but does so without going into a deep study of Biblical languages, etc. She tries to look at life and our choices in life based on an eternal value system. But she does this without being preachy or critical about the things she has left behind. I am amazed that she could accomplish this. :-) Reading this book felt almost like talking with an old friend whose heart was knit to my own.
Embracing Your Second Calling isn't a book to tell you that one life style is right and another is wrong. Her focus is on priorities but without focusing on a list. For Ms. Bourke this meant simplifying her life; although, as I indicated earlier, her "simplified" life still looks pretty hectic to me. Rather than saying, "Do this" or "Don't do that" she focuses more on values. Without criticizing anyone's choices, past or present, she gently encourages those eternal values I mentioned earlier. Most of the women she talked about in the book lead lives that are much closer to the corporate executive end of the spectrum than the stay at home mom end where I have lived. This is the main thing that almost kept me from finishing the book. However, she did such a good job of presenting the principles she was sharing that such differences didn't really matter and were hardly noticeable.
So, I said this book is good for women in any walk of life; and that is true because those principles are valid in all our lives. However, it is really written for the woman who is in a place to make changes in her life or who is having changes thrust upon her, for whatever reason. Ms. Bourke suggests that there are things more important than "success" or "winning" and that we should be making our life decisions based on those more important principles. If you are a young woman with children to care for and think you aren't in a place to make changes in your life, you can still find inspiration in this book. It won't encourage you to put your children in day care and go into the workforce; what it will do is encourage you to begin to build those important activities into your life NOW so you don't have so many changes to make when you hit those middle years. If you are already in the middle years, as I am, it doesn't criticize what you've done or are doing. The books isn't really activity focused so much as it is attitude, heart, and eternity focused. It encourages us to stretch ourselves to the point where we find ourselves outside our natural comfort zones. That will look different for each of us.
Are you ready to give GOD control of what you do and where you go? Are you ready to be stretched to places you never thought you would be? Are you ready to look at life from a perspective that doesn't value success more than being who GOD made you to be? Are you ready to be the woman that GOD made you to be, the woman He has been shaping through all your life this far? I heartily recommend Embracing Your Second Calling.
Happy Reading :-)
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