It Is Always Time
for God's Grace
The
Time of Grace Christian
romance series is different than most I've read. Its overall theme
is that God himself is the great lover of the men and women who
live their lives from day to day. The secondary theme is the
difference Christians can
make in the lives of those who live in despair because they have not
experienced God's grace and have no hope.
Not Your Typical
Christian Romance
Most Christian
romances I read have two main characters who fall in love but
encounter obstacles on the path to marriage. These are often due to a
misunderstanding on the part of one or both of the characters. Maybe
they overheard some gossip they accepted as fact, or saw something
that was different than it appeared to be. The main action in these
romances is getting the two people together and married so they can
live happily ever after. We don't usually see what comes after.
The three books in
the Time of Grace Series are not like that. The main
character, Jesus, is never seen except in the lives of his people and
their efforts to reach out to those have not yet accepted his free
gift of grace and salvation. We see God dealing with the main
characters as families and as individual members of those families.
The three Christian
historical romance novels in this series are set during the
depression years in Rhode Island. Book 1, The Fragrance of Geraniums,
begins in 1934. In it we first meet fifteen-year-old Grace Picoletti,
as she auditions for the school chorus, humiliated because the rubber
band holding the sole of her saddle shoe has burst, and her shoe is
flapping. Her family is destitute. We also meet her teacher, Mr.
Kinner, who is conducting the auditions. He and his wife, Emmeline
live in a lovely home and Emmeline grows geraniums from hanging pots
on her porch. Grace looks forward to seeing the beauty of these red
geraniums every day as she comes home from school. We also meet
Paulie Giorgi, one of Grace's classmates, son of a prominent doctor.
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| Photo in Public Domain Courtesy of Pixabay |
The Families
The Picoletti Family
The Picoletti family
is destitute. Grace's mother Sarah lives in despair. Her husband
Charlie is unfaithful and abusive. As the book opens Grace's oldest
brother Ben makes a surprise visit. He tells Grace
their father is planning to bring his latest mistress home to live on a cottage on their property. He reveals he has fought with his father about this and has just punched Charlie out because of it. He tells Grace he
has to leave again.
The other four
children are minor characters in the book. Sarah finally sends her
favorite, Evelyn, to live with her wealthier sister so she can have a
better life. Grace's two older sisters leave home to get jobs and
live on their own to get away from the violence. Then they get married and we don't see much of
them after that. Cliff, the younger brother, is out of control and
often gets into trouble.
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| Photo in Public Domain Courtesy of Pixabay |
The author focuses
mostly on Sarah and Grace, both of whom have little hope. There is
not enough to eat, Charlie publicly humiliates them with his blatant
infidelity, and they can't afford decent clothes or shoes. Sarah has
let herself go physically, since Charlie pays little attention to her
anymore except to demand she cook, clean, and take care of his
laundry – or else. The family is Catholic, but they don't connect
what happens in church to their daily lives. They have no notion of a God that loves them personally. They have no hope of improving their lives.
Grace is highly
intelligent, but Sarah is expecting another baby and insists Grace will
need to quit school to help her. The baby is born 85% of the way through the
book, and Emmeline, who has become a friend to Sarah, stays to help
her. Charlie shows no interest in the baby and wants no part of him.
This crushes Sarah.
Charlie's mistress Gertrude leaves him and takes
everything of value that was in the room they shared. Charlie goes to
town, gets drunk, and is killed in an accident. He leaves Sarah no
source of income and much debt, since he has not paid the bills or
the mortgage in months and the bank is about to take the house. She
sees no solution except to move in with her brother in New Jersey,
taking Cliff and Grace, and leaving friends and her grown children
behind.
The Kinner Family
Geoff and Emmeline
Kinner attend the First Baptist Church. They are a middle class
family and economically well off enough to share what they have with
others. They are kind to all. Geoff is Grace and Paulie's teacher, is truly interested in his
students, and prays for them.
To outsiders, Geoff and Emmeline appear to have an ideal life. But they want to start a family, and Emmeline has
never been able to carry a child to full term. At the beginning of
this book she has told her husband she is four months pregnant, and
they are ecstatic, since Emmeline has never carried a baby this long.
But when Emmeline sees the doctor the next day, he dashes her hopes
and tells her she probably will lose this baby, too.
The Giorgi Family
Doctor Samuel Giorgi
and his son Paulie, seventeen, live in a mansion with a staff of
servants. Samuel's wife, Julie, Paulie's mother, died of an aneurysm six years ago, and Samuel and Paulie miss her terribly. They also
attend First Baptist Church.
After Julie's death,
Samuel hired Mrs. McCusker as a house keeper to run his household and
help out with Paulie. Sam is a prominent obstetrician who often has
to leave to deliver babies at all hours of the night. In the last
chapters of The Fragrance of Geraniums we learn that Samuel had once
been engaged to Sarah before he left for college. His family had
disapproved of her, and said if he married they would not pay for his
education. He had intended to get get through medical school and then
come back and marry her. She had felt betrayed because he had chosen
his education over her, and had married Charlie. Sam later met Julie
and fell in love with and married her.
Three Books, One
Story
After reading what's
above, you can probably guess a lot of the plot. Paulie and Grace are
classmates and fall in love despite their different economic
classes. Emmeline and Grace become friends, and through that
relationship Emmeline also meets Sarah and reaches out to her. When
Charlie badly burns his face badly in the last quarter of the book,
he comes to Sarah for help. She sends Grace to get the regular
doctor, but he's away at a conference. They can't afford the hospital
or an ambulance, and even though Grace is trying to avoid Paulie, she
sees no option but to run to his house to see if his father will
come.
Mrs McCusker answers the door and says the doctor cannot be
disturbed, but Paulie hears the conversation and gets his dad. Mrs.
McCusker treats Grace shabbily. Sam and Paulie drive Grace home. As
Sam treats Charlie, Sarah is holding his head. Sam and Sarah
recognize each other. She did not know he had returned.
By the end of the
first book, Grace has finally understood that Jesus does love her and
has given her life to him. Sarah has been listening at home in her
darkest hours to a Protestant radio station, mostly for the music.
What she hears conflicts with much she has believed as a Catholic,
but she wants to believe that Jesus loves her and can change her. She
just isn’t sure how to approach him. Emmeline has shared her faith
and how Jesus helps her through her grief over the loss of her child.
The book ends with
Charlie's funeral. All three families are there. We have seen God's answer to the prayers of Emmeline and Geoff. The reader is left
hanging as to what will happen to the Picoletti family. Will Sam and
Sarah renew their relationship now that Charlie is dead? Do Grace and
Paulie have a future together? Those questions are answered in the
last two books, which I had to purchase because I couldn't stop
reading until I reached the last page of the last book.
The Books' Themes
Several themes
play out in this series. First is God's unconditional love. This
theme pervades all the others. Christians need, by God's grace, to
forgive those who hurt them physically and emotionally, in order to be whole themselves.
Love is sacrificial.
This theme comes to a climax near the end of the last book. God's
love is redemptive. Sam shows us this in the last book very vividly.
God's love
persistent. Both Paulie and Sam persist in reaching out to members of
the Picoletti family even when their efforts are rejected.
God seeks and saves
those who are lost in despair and bitterness. He uses his people to
help, as he used Sam, Paulie, and Emmeline in this book. They prayed,
and they shared their faith, but first they listened and helped
physically with unspoken needs.
An example: Emmeline initiated a
relationship with Grace just because she knew Grace always paused at
her house to look at something on the way home from school. She used
that knowledge to reach out to Grace and get acquainted. She
suspected Grace didn't get enough to eat, so she made sure there were
fresh cookies and milk whenever Grace visited. She suspected that
Grace was ashamed of her home so she invited Grace and Paulie to have
their tutoring sessions at her kitchen table, along with refreshments.
The author shows
that only people who get their sense of worth from the knowledge that
God loves them are secure enough to be who they really are. Since
they know God accepts them, they do not need to live for the approval
of or fear the judgment of others.
A good part of The Fragrance of Geraniums consists of passages from the Bible that the characters share with each
other or encounter in radio or church sermons. This might be a bit
much for some people, but each passage is relevant to the themes.
The characters share their reactions, not always positive, to these
passages.
My Opinion of the
Series
Overall, the series held my
interest because from the beginning I cared about the characters. I
empathized with Sarah and Grace. I wanted Paulie and Grace to
straighten out their friendship when it became strained. I wanted
Sarah and Grace to experience the grace of God. And I wanted Ben to
surrender his bitterness and false pride and answer the nudging of
the Holy Spirit. I wanted to see how God would accomplish his plan in
each life.
I felt there were
some weaknesses that we see in many Christian novels. Although there
was a lot of showing in the lives of the characters, there might have
been a bit too much telling. It was preachy. Sam and Paulie were so
godly they were unrealistic. I loved them, but they were almost too
Christlike. They were both very good at turning the other cheek and
praying for those who hurt them when most people would at least say
something hurtful back and ask forgiveness later. They did sometimes have thoughts that weren't loving, but they hardly ever gave voice to them. I can't think of one example where they really lost it, even though they were tempted.
The author was good
at foreshadowing future events. She dropped enough clues to enable the
reader to predict why there was a problem between Grace and Paulie in
the last book. To say anymore would be a spoiler.
The relationship
between Paulie and Sam was one any father would envy. It contrasted
with the terrible relationship between Ben and his father Charlie.
Emmeline and Geoff showed Grace that all men were not like her father
and that a marriage could be healthy and loving.
Unlike most
romances, the books in this series are serious and deal with heavy
subjects like abuse, bereavement, and rebellion. The marriages are
not always the “live happily ever after” kind – even when the
man and wife are Christians. Even forgiven sins have consequences
that make life hard. God works his plan out even in these marriages
that aren't ideal. The main love is between God and the characters,
and until they are rightly related to him, the human love affairs
don't go very smoothly.
As you read the looks, you may find yourself grappling with issues instead of escaping into a pleasant world with a happy wedding at the end. There are plenty of dark valleys to walk through before you see a rainbow. It's still a journey I'm glad I took -- realistic or not.
Book 1,
The Fragrance of Geraniums, is free for your
Kindle as I write this. I hope it will hook you and that you will want to read the other two books, as I did. I would suggest you get all three books at once. Just click on the book covers above.
Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN), Esty (Awin), and/or Zazzle Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”
