Big news this month!
First, By The Book is celebrating its 15th Anniversary! Woo hoo! We will be reading a novel by South African author, Irma Joubert, titled Child of The River. I read and loved The Girl from The Train and am excited to dig into this book.
Second, Page Turners is combining Bible study and book club for the next three months in what we are calling The Faith And Fiction Study. In September we are studying the story of Samson and Delilah from Judges 13-16 and reading Delilah: Treacherous Beauty by Angela Hunt. I am very much looking forward to this combo of my two favorite things — fiction and the Bible.
Check out both of our selections!
Persomi is young, white, and poor, born the middle child of illiterate sharecroppers on the prosperous Fourie farm in the South African Bushveld. Persomi’s world is extraordinarily small. She has never been to the local village and spends her days absorbed in the rhythms of the natural world around her, escaping the brutality and squalor of her family home through the newspapers and books passed down to her from the main house and through her walks in the nearby mountains.
Persomi’s close relationship with her older brother Gerbrand and her fragile friendship with Boelie Fourie—heir to the Fourie farm and fortune—are her lifeline and her only connection to the outside world. When Gerbrand leaves the farm to fight on the side of the Anglos in WWII and Boelie joins an underground network of Boer nationalists, Persomi’s isolated world is blown wide open. But as her very small world falls apart, bigger dreams become open to her—dreams of an education, a profession, a native country that values justice and equality, and of love. As Persomi navigates the changing world around her—the tragedies of war and the devastating racial strife of her homeland—she finally discovers who she truly is, where she belongs, and why her life — and every life — matters.
The English language publication of Child of the River solidifies Irma Joubert as a unique and powerful voice in historical fiction.
Life is not easy in Philistia, especially not for a woman and child alone. When beautiful, wounded Delilah finds herself begging for food to survive, she resolves that she will find a way to defeat all the men who have taken advantage of her. She will overcome the roadblocks life has set before her, and she will find riches and victory for herself.
When she meets a legendary man called Samson, she senses that in him lies the means for her victory. By winning, seducing, and betraying the hero of the Hebrews, she will attain a position of national prominence. After all, she is beautiful, she is charming, and she is smart. No man, not even a supernaturally gifted strongman, can best her in a war of wits.
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