Review: The Search for Truth
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 11, 2013
Off the Gulf of Mexico, gale wind forces were blowing water over the roads, sometimes hiding it from view. Out near Christmas Bay, a car had mucked down in a marsh during the storm. Paul Quinn stopped by the road to offer assistance. A small elderly woman backed out of the passenger side of the car. Paul could see blood stains on her clothing. Peering inside the car, he noticed a younger woman behind the steering wheel, and a lot more blood stains. Without explanation, the older woman headed for her car. Paul asked if the younger woman was all right. "Fine, just fine." With a mysterious air about her, she drove off.Paul offered assistance to the younger woman, who had a bloody towel clutched in her left hand. She looked in shock. When she sat in his truck, on the way to nearby Surfside, she introduced herself as Juliette. She explained the accident. The wind had whipped the driver's side door out of her hands and slammed it shut right on her fingers. They were caught at the knuckles and left dangling. She remembered the pain was unbearable. Agony filled her mind and she screamed...wrapped the beach towel around her hand. She must have passed out. Then the little elderly lady stopped by and prayed over the hand, loudly, as the wind was still gusting outside. When the towel was removed, Juliette's hand was whole and the pain was gone.Paul listened to this story quietly and wondered what his part would be in this tale. He knew the Lord, and understood this to be amiracle. But Juliette was not a believer and didn't know what to think of an experience like this. She returned to the house that has been her summer resting place growing up. The remainder of this story is Juliette's experiences with her friends, her former roommate and daughter, her parents, and her fiance when she tries to explain what happened to her. The problem was that no one but Paul believed her. In her world, God wasn't a reality, so there must be another explanation. Her parents even took her to the hospital to have her hand looked at. The nurses didn't even believe her.As her personality is revealed throughout the tale, the reader understands how incredible this incident would sound to others. Juliette wasn't sounding like herself. Her roomate is Buddist and doesn't want to talk about religion at all. Her fiance, a lawyer, argues with her about it. Her parents are worried that since she is working on her doctoral thesis, perhaps she was suffering stress related problems. The more the opposition to her claim to be healed, the more Juliette was determined to get some answers.The remainder of the story is about her spiritual journey to find God, get to know Him, get some answers on why this experiencehappened to her. Her spiritual journey is interesting to read. How she found the answers when no one was around to help her reminds me of my own experiences in finding Jesus as my Savior. Just as in real life, some of her experiences getting together with other Christians was good and some was bad. I enjoyed watching her develop into maturity as a new believer in Jesus.While I really enjoyed this book and the premise, some of the writing was too long and dragged out, while at other times, not enough time was given to develop a person's character more fully. I saw this especially in Paul Quinn, who did not interact in most of the story except in the beginning and at the end. I felt he could have played a larger role in Juliette's growth as a baby Christian. And in spite of the fact that eventually Paul and Juliette get together at the end, this is not a romance story. It is a story of a person's transformation from the inside out by a loving God.