It’s the Easter season. A time we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and new life.
So I thought I’d look around for some books with themes of resurrection and redemption. Books about new lives and starting over. Books that tell stories of great loss or destruction and the triumph that comes through overcoming.
You know what? There’s lot of them. (Warning: there may be some spoilers).
We’ll start with one of my favorites.
Persuasion
Jane Austen’s Persuasion isn’t one of her better known books, but I found it as enjoyable, if not more so, than some of her more famous works.
Persuasion is the story of Anne Elliott, who was persuaded to give up her unsuitable fiancé. Twelve years later, she’s still unmarried, still attached to the man who won her heart.
She’s reconciled herself to remaining an old maid. Then her former beau comes back into her life. In spite of herself, in spite of his justifiable feelings of resentment, the two come back together.
Suddenly, the pain of the last twelve years has been redeemed and Anne finds herself in a new life. We’re led to believe that she lives happily ever after. (Not something we can say for everyone else in the story.)
Rite of Rejection/Revelation/Redemption
Sarah Negovetich’s trilogy grabbed me to the point I had to read it straight through.
The story opens with the heroine, Rebecca, getting ready to go through a coming of age ritual. All sixteen year olds are screened by a machine, to determine if they are suitable members of society, or criminals in the making.
Rebecca, the good student, was sure she’d be Accepted. Instead, she was rejected and sent off to a penal colony. For life.
Her world has fallen apart. She’s devastated at the idea of living in a lawless camp populated by criminals.
She does what she must to put a new life together. She joins a misfit band and acquires a fiancée she’s not sure she loves.
But she’s willing to do anything to get away from the label of Rejected. Along the way, she deals with betrayal and loss. And learns that the price of freedom and redemption can be extraordinarily high.
How Shall We Love?
Precarious Yates’ story of Cornelia takes the reader on an amazing journey. Cornelia’s intellectual parents raise her to ask questions and research everything she wants to know. As her family fractures, she starts to research how we should love.
How she finds answers, builds a life, and reconciles with her father takes her in unexpected directions. There’s no pat answer in the end. Just the joy of her new life, and the hope of redemption.
What other books have you found with redemption or resurrection themes?