It's been a very warm and humid few weeks here.  I've been camped in front of the fan reading.  What have I been reading you ask?

• And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers
• I am the Clay by Chaim Potok
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (more about this in a later post)
• The Little Princess by Frances H. Burnett
• Waking the Dead by John Eldredge
• The Dead Don't Dance by Charles Martin

I admit it...I like the old classics. But I try to throw into the mix a few books that make me think - both non-fiction and fiction.

I am the Clay is not at all what I was expecting.  My past experience with Mr. Potok has been The Chosen and The Promise - both are set in NYC, both are kind of "coming of age' books.

This one is nothing like that.  It is set in Korea during the war. The style of writing feels Asian...almost like reading a haiku.  It is more descriptive and you are inside the character's heads as they think and plan and survive.  There is a sense of loss that flows through it all. The sadness of war.

A little boy has lost his whole family and village. An older couple rescues him from death as they weave their way through the country-side just ahead of the battle.
The couple lost their only child as a toddler and the old lady feels this is her second chance at motherhood.  The old man resents the boy, the food he eats, the burden of his care -eventually the man changes his mind.

Together they try to rebuild a shattered world.