Barbara Cameron

Dear Readers,

Abingdon Press entered the fiction market just a short while ago.  (Not sure how long but in the last couple of years.)  Their books were easy to recommend as they seemed to be making an effort to find good authors with interesting stories to tell.  They had several different genres available and were looking to do something new and exciting.

Abingdon wanted their fiction to be so much more than just a story.  Now to be perfectly honest I wasn’t so sure about this when I first heard about it because I have seen publishing houses do this before and the fiction is lost in the author’s attempt to teach us something.  Very few people read fiction for the knowledge they will gain, they read it for the pure enjoyment of it, if we happen to learn something, well then all the better. .

I was asked to join the blog tour for Her Restless Heart by Barbara Cameron.  It is the first book in her Stitches in Time series.  It is actually the second book that Abingdon has centered a Bible study on, the first being the Shining Waters series by Melody Carlson.  

Understand I did not read the fiction book first, as the study says you don’t need to read the book to do the study.  I wanted to see if it was confusing, if it made me want to read the book or wish I had read the book.   Now those of you who read my blog regularly know that Amish fiction is not my favorite, but I am willing to give it a try.  It all made for a very interesting adventure for me.

This Bible study will work for you whether you have read the books or not.  I had no problem following the storyline and keeping up with what was going on.  Barbara and Abingdon Press did a good job of including enough of the story to make it clear.  The questions are interesting and don’t just focus on the fiction story, they are very much about the Bible story and how it is still so much a part of our lives today.

The videos would be a nice way to open a group meeting; now I was doing the study by myself at home, but Barbara’s interviews and insights made for what I felt would be a good launching place for a group discussion.  If you had done all the homework throughout the week, you would have no problem keeping up doing a group session.

I think the only thing that I would warn groups about is there is homework and you do have to keep up or you lose the train of thought of the story and how it relates to the topic that is being discuss that day.  Sometimes between the reading and answering the questions I felt a bit overwhelmed by the work.  But overall I enjoyed the experience and I think Abingdon has a neat concept.

Happy Reading.