Her Mother’s Hope
by Francine Rivers
Paperback
Price: £10.99
Publisher:Tyndale House Publishers
Published:March 2010
ISBN:978-1-414-33679-4
GoodBookStall Review:
At nearly 500 pages this is pure pleasure to read. I managed it in two days I was so ‘hooked’.
Francine Rivers has woven this story around a strong element of her family’s history.
Marta Schneider lives in a small village in Switzerland. Her Mother is frail, her father a drunken bully who belittles Marta at every opportunity and blames her for every thing that goes wrong, even for her lazy brother failing his exams! No praise for the fact that she had passed top of her class, and works constantly to help her mother. Instead of becoming cowed, Marta is determined to break free of her fathers domineering control and sets out to work even harder and store every piece of knowledge from wherever she goes.
Tragedy strikes her Mother and sister and Marta knows she must never go back to be at her father’s beck and call. She travels to England and finds work where after a number of years her employer encourages her to seek her fortune across the Atlantic. The story continues for many more years, but Marta’s behaviour is coloured by the experiences of those early years. Hildemara or Hildie as she is known by the family is Marta’s elder daughter, and Marta does not seem able to understand that her stern treatment of this daughter, in contrast to her other daughters, is doing irreparable harm.
Hildie (a reflection of Francine River’s own mother) becomes the main character but with Marta always there in the background.
There is so much in this story that the bare outline given here, does not do justice to the content, and joy of joys, there is a sequel coming in the autumn, Her Daughter’s Dream
Reviewer: Mary Bartholomew (11/06/10)
At nearly 500 pages this is pure pleasure to read. I managed it in two days I was so ‘hooked’.
Francine Rivers has woven this story around a strong element of her family’s history.
Marta Schneider lives in a small village in Switzerland. Her Mother is frail, her father a drunken bully who belittles Marta at every opportunity and blames her for every thing that goes wrong, even for her lazy brother failing his exams! No praise for the fact that she had passed top of her class, and works constantly to help her mother. Instead of becoming cowed, Marta is determined to break free of her fathers domineering control and sets out to work even harder and store every piece of knowledge from wherever she goes.
Tragedy strikes her Mother and sister and Marta knows she must never go back to be at her father’s beck and call. She travels to England and finds work where after a number of years her employer encourages her to seek her fortune across the Atlantic. The story continues for many more years, but Marta’s behaviour is coloured by the experiences of those early years. Hildemara or Hildie as she is known by the family is Marta’s elder daughter, and Marta does not seem able to understand that her stern treatment of this daughter, in contrast to her other daughters, is doing irreparable harm.
Hildie (a reflection of Francine River’s own mother) becomes the main character but with Marta always there in the background.
There is so much in this story that the bare outline given here, does not do justice to the content, and joy of joys, there is a sequel coming in the autumn, Her Daughter’s Dream
Reviewer: Mary Bartholomew (11/06/10)
