Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Here Burns My Candle by Liz Curtis Higgs


From the Back Cover:

A mother who cannot face her future.
A daughter who cannot escape her past.

Lady Elisabeth Kerr is a keeper of secrets. A Highlander by birth and a Lowlander by marriage, she honors the auld ways, even as doubts and fears stir deep within her.

Her husband, Lord Donald, has secrets of his own, well hidden from the household, yet whispered among the town gossips.

His mother, the dowager Lady Marjory, hides gold beneath her floor and guilt inside her heart. Though her two abiding passions are maintaining her place in society and coddling her grown sons, Marjory’s many regrets, buried in Greyfriars Churchyard, continue to plague her.

One by one the Kerr family secrets begin to surface, even as bonny Prince Charlie and his rebel army ride into Edinburgh in September 1745, intent on capturing the crown.

A timeless story of love and betrayal, loss and redemption, flickering against the vivid backdrop of eighteenth-century Scotland, Here Burns My Candle illumines the dark side of human nature, even as hope, the brightest of tapers, lights the way home.

My Review:

Here Burns My Candle is retelling of the biblical story of Ruth and Naomi but set in 1745 Scotland. This is the first book of a two book saga and basically covers the first part of the Book of Ruth. The second book, Mine is the Night, finished the Book of Ruth as well as brings conclusion to this fictional story. The detail in this book is spectacular, every little detailed was well researched by the author Liz Curtis Higgs: both Scotland's history and Biblical history.

I will admit I found the book to be rather slow at times, but at other times it moved quickly. It does take a good 70-100 pages to fully get into the story as there is a lot of set up taking place and getting to know the different characters. Liz uses a lot of old English words and dialect so at times it was hard to figure out what was going on. This is definitely not a book you will just sit down and read in 3 hours. This is book is a lot more like reading a classic book because it requires the reader to sit down and slowly absorb the whole book and take in every last word. In the end I found the book to be enjoyable and will read the second book but not sure I would say it is my favorite book. I give it 4 stars out of 5.

I received this book from the Waterbrook Multnomah through their Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review.

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