Reading Tai-Bo

I just finished my last Christmas book. The historical novel that the hunky hubby kindly gifted me on Christmas day. It was wonderful, but as always when reading Brock and Bodie Thoene, a heart squnching experience. I always hesitate and dither a bit before picking up one of their books. Oh their writing is superb, great stories combined with lovely descriptions, action, and character. All you could ask for. But they kill people off, all the time. And so it takes awhile to work up the nerve to begin the story, knowing that you may be balling in agony upon its completion. Now don’t get me wrong, it is one of the things I like most about them as writers, but it is just so painful.

There was the time they wrote about the slaughter of baby boys in Bethlehem. Yes that’s right. And they didn’t just kill them all off, oh no, you got to know these little boys. You saw their births and learned to love their parents and learned which ones were supposed to be girls and which ones were adopted when their mothers died on the road giving them birth and which ones had grumpy dads and which ones were learning to talk and had pet lambs and liked puppies. And then, only then, did they kill them all off. It was agonizing, but well written.

And that is why I am just a wee bit leery as I picked up their latest. But it was wonderful. Oh sure there was a naggy wife of epic proportions that did heap me with some guilt. “Am I like that…uh…well sometimes, but not every day, at least not every hour for sure.” But all in all a good read. The lepers in the tale did lose their families, but they finally found Yeshua and were healed, all ten. And so a happy ending as well as a finely wrought tome. Yeah!