Review: Heartwarming Short Story
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 8, 2012
For Sophia's Heart by Lyn CoteA NovellaThis is a story of two people on a train to Chicago, each heading to a new start in life in 1898.Sophia Schiffler is the daughter of a poor immigrant from Ljubljana. Going to Chicago to start a new life. To marry a man she'll be meeting for the first time. Not a love match but it will be one less person for her father to support with his farm job in Wisconsin. She meets a handsome young man on the train who refuses to let her meet her intended alone. When one incident leads to another....she ends up in a marriage of convenience for her own protection. Who could have known the doors that one act of kindness would open up for her, little Sophia?Gannon Moore is going from a university student to being a soldier. He feels pulled to help the young immigrant woman and later sees that it must have been God that put them on that train together....at that time. The letters he receives from Sophia while in the army and memories he has of her from their two short days together help him through the worst of times. As she is a stranger in America he soon feels the same way in Cuba, being in a strange land with a language he don't understand.This is just a short novella but so packed full. The author does such a great job of bringing the characters to life along with their emotions. I could imagine Gannon fighting off the mosquitoes in Florida and fighting the battle in Cuba. The reality of Sophia having to rely on someone else to read and write letters for her until she could learn the language enough to do it herself. And the struggles each of them faced hoping and praying the other was safe. I really enjoyed it.