RITA Reader Challenge Review

Hope at Dawn by Stacy Henrie

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Tealadytoo. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Inspirational Romance category.

The summary:

With her brothers away fighting the Great War overseas, Livy Campbell desperately wants to help her family. Her chance comes when she meets a handsome stranger who lands her a job as a teacher in a place far from her parents’ farm. But the war casts a long shadow over the German-American town that Livy now calls home—and the darkness will test everything she thought she knew about family and love . . .

More than anything, Friedrick Wagner wants to be part of his adopted country’s struggle for peace. But when the bitter animosity between Germans and Americans soon turns citizens against newcomers, friend against friend, he will do whatever it takes to protect Livy from the hysteria that grips their town. As tragedy—and dark secrets from the past—threaten their future, Friedrick and Livy have one chance to stand up for what’s right . . . and one chance to fight for their love.

Here is Tealadytoo's review:

Hope at Dawn is the first book in Stacy Henrie’s “Of Love and War” series, set around the time of World War I.  Since this is an underutilized period in the historical romance novel world, there’s a potential for freshness here.  And the specific issue is one I’ve not seen addressed in a romance novel before, namely, the persecution of German Americans on the home front during WWI.  It’s an interesting backdrop for the tale.

The hero of the story is Friedrick Wagner, a young mid-Western farmer whose parents had emigrated to the US years ago.  He is not serving in the armed forces because he has a deferment to keep the family farm running while his father is slowly dying.   The German community is looked on with great suspicion by their “American” neighbors.  Speaking German in public is outlawed.  “Vigilance Committees” that are little more than mobs harass the German families into spending all their savings on war bonds.   (Historical trivia:  German language classes in US public schools were as common as French or Spanish prior to the outbreak of WWI.  At that time, most German classes were discontinued, and were never restored.)

The heroine is Livy Campbell, who has come to the area to take over teaching duties in the small school in the German section of town.  She is anxious to make a fresh start, as her almost-fiancé returned from overseas with a bad leg, bad memories and the need to escape from it all in the bottle.

On the plus side, we have the very interesting background, and intriguing questions of what patriotism and loyalty really mean.  We have a nicely developing relationship where the conflict starts out as a matter of trust and understanding (Is she just as bigoted as the other townsfolks?  Is she being loyal to her family if she is kind to a non-combatant German when her brothers are fighting overseas, possibly even fighting relatives of his?) and then evolves to issues of whether it is safe to purse the relationship when a love affair between an American girl and a “Bosch” would inflame an already tense situation.

On the downside, there is a point in the story where the couple is brought closer via an illness.  Henrie states that it’s “influenza”, and the local doctor gets very nervous.  But it’s all very quickly handled and the story moves on.  This jarred me out of the story as the 1918 flu was a VERY BIG DEAL, would not have progressed as the flu in the story did, and would be more than ample fodder for an entirely different story.  Given that all kinds of illnesses were possible in 1918, it probably would have been better to have advanced the relationship with something a bit simpler, rather than introducing and dropping the flu.  This, however, is a fairly minor point.

The other issue that I have is with the inspirational nature of the story.  Handling the religious aspects of the characters’ lives is a delicate task.  In the perfect novel, it flows naturally from the characters.  Faith is part of who they are, so meeting crisis with prayer, or seeking counsel from a clergyperson, etc. just seems to be a normal thing for them.   In the worst inspirational novels, characters think or speak in the form of heavy-handed sermons or else the author doesn’t know what to do with the inspirational parts and they pop up randomly and jarringly.  This story tends more toward the latter flaw.  Characters spend a lot of time concerned with the effect of their actions on their families, jobs and community.  Occasionally, a prayer occurs, or they ponder the will of God, but it seems rather tacked on at times.  I’ve seen far worse, and it does not ruin the book by any means, but hopefully the author will develop a surer hand in subsequent books.

There also seems to be a lost opportunity in the character of the ex-beau alcoholic veteran.  He ends up being something of a cookie-cutter villain later in the book, precipitating the final crisis.   The notion of how he slid so far, and how much Christian compassion you can or should extend to someone wallowing in addiction and treating you horribly, is never explored.  It would have made a richer book if it had been.

Overall, though, the pluses outweigh the minuses, and in this book, we have a solid romance with an intriguing historical background.

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Hope at Dawn by Stacy Henrie

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Add Your Comment →

  1. Turophile says:

    Thank you for the thoughtful review.

  2. Emily A. says:

    I am inspired by your thoughtful review. Thank you!

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