This is a review by me of a new book you might find of interest. A Beautiful Land
“A Beautiful Land” by Susan Beth Miller is a story of survival and rebuilding when a beloved homeland is caught up in the violence of conflict and warfare. Along the way, the writing is searing as in
Daylight crept in. She wished it away, wanting night’s cover, but the dawn paid her no attention. She silently cursed the sun with nasty words.
Haunting as in
Did those who went mad and thought of nothing but murder go back to ploughing fields and nursing crops? How could that be? Could a farmer become a butcher, then once again a farmer, kindly to his neighbor?
Touching as in
She wasn’t ready for the fields to end. She wished they’d stretch forever, fresh and green and planted in one nice thing or another, because after the fields petered out to grassland, they’d all be looking for the tail end of that old road. And once they found it, they would be on the path to take them home.
More than this, however, the struggle of Raissa and Dogood and their family and friends could have been set anywhere with any expanse of characters where despair and hatred and the tragedies of innocents reign. In that sense, “A Beautiful Land” is timeless in its reach and boundless in its conflict of anguish and hope.
This is a story that will stay with you after the last page.
