I've been a fan of Francine Rivers for as long as I can remember, mostly due to the influence of my mother. She owned all of Rivers' books and I get my keenness for reading from her; she can demolish a book quicker than anyone I know. I say 'owned' because somehow when we were younger, in our desires to emulate our mother, my twin sister and I managed to misplace most of the books in her Francine Rivers collection. Oops. We've been slowly buying her the books back over the years but I digress.The Atonement Child. Although Rivers published this novel in 1997, I've only just recently read it because I wanted to be mature and learned enough to fully understand its content, in order to develop my own views on them. The Atonement Child is the story of young Christian woman Dynah Carey, whose life is going swimmingly well; she's engaged to the seemingly perfect and respectable Ethan, who is also a Christian, she has loving parents and she has deserved her scholarship at one of the best Christian colleges in the country, as her grades are perfect. However, this perfect world begins to fall apart when she is raped one evening on her way home from work. Things get even worse when Dynah falls pregnant and the police are unable to apprehend her attacker, as Dynah did not see his face.
This was a very interesting yet hard novel for me to read because as a Christian myself, I could totally put myself in Dynah's shoes. Whilst reading the book, I had to stop myself on many occasions from judging the characters too harshly on some of their infuriatingly selfish decisions. This is because it is a difficult topic that one can never fully know what one would do, unless actually put into the situation. The Atonement Child raised many questions in me; Is abortion alright if the foetus is the unwanted product of rape? Are Christians pro-life or pro-choice? The word abortion is never actually mentioned in the Bible so that makes it right, right? These are very difficult questions and abortion is still a very controversial topic today.
Rivers is very effective in showing the hypocrisy that can exist even amongst Christian circles regarding this topic. It shocked me how quick some of the faith leaders in the novel like the college's Dean and Ethan were to tell the protagonist to abort, even kicking her out of school for hesitating to do so, without even considering her circumstances, their only intent being to maintain the 'name' of the school. I praise Rivers on the sensitive way that she deals with these themes of unwanted pregnancy, rape and religious viewpoints on both, as well as exploring (without being too 'preachy') the emotional trauma that abortion can cause, an issue that is not often talked on.
Although some might criticize her novels for being too 'wafflly' and 'corny' at times, I particularly like the way that Rivers develops her characters in such a way that even their names aren't chosen at random. (Bible trivia: 'Dinah' is the name of Jacob's only daughter, who was raped in Genesis). The Atonement Child taught me that the repercussions of a person's actions can be felt by later generations, it is never good to hold on to old hurts; communication is key and God always has a plan, in the bad as well as the good.
My only criticism of The Atonement Child is in one section, where a character states that Dynah should abort the baby because, 'What if the rapist was black?' I wasn't exactly sure what Rivers was trying to get across here but maybe I am reading too much into it.
Does Dynah keep the baby, does she abort and what happens with her fiance and family? Well, you're going to have to read it yourself to find out what happens. It really is a fantastic, engrossing read.
Rating- 4/5 ****
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Atonement-Child-Francine-Rivers/dp/0842300414
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