Book Review – January 18, 2011

Restoration Series, Last Light is a science-fiction/murder mystery, Christian style. What would our lives be like if we suddenly lost all technology?  No money, no car, no phones, no electricity, no food or water.  An interruption in the electromagnetic pulse would knock out functioning of anything and everything associated with any type of electric pulse, including batteries of all kinds. Can you even imagine what our lives would be like without everything we know today? There are no cars, no ATMs, no computers, no financial system, no government leadership, no media, no communication, no post office, no refrigeration, no grocery stores, no health care.  We would have to walk out of our suburban homes, dig in the ground and start planting potatoes, beans…whatever we could manage to cultivate and we would have to do it all by hand. Any food would have to be grown or killed.  We would have to wash our clothes by hand in a lake or river. It is hard to wrap our brains around how different and difficult life would become. In Last Light, the affluent Branning family of suburban Birmingham respond to this disaster with fear.  At first, they begin hoarding and protecting all they have.  Eventually they come to understand the way to survive is by reaching out to their neighbors in love and generosity.  As they unite with others around them in an effort to survive, they learn life is about sacrifice and giving. The murder mystery is thrown in when a couple in the Branning’s upscale neighborhood is found dead and they realize a killer is living among them.  To add insult to injury, when the identity of the killer is learned, the Branning’s discover their 22 year old daughter, Deni, has taken off with the killer on a cross country trek desperate to make her way to the East Coast where she thinks life will be better.  It did not take Deni long to realize her traveling companion was the murderer and that she is now in grave danger. Author Terri Blackstock stated “I hope that readers will be reminded that God sometimes allows difficulties into our lives to refine us.  Sometimes, we find ourselves in the middle of a disaster….and if we’re strong enough in our faith, we can see that we were included (in the disaster) so that we would be in place to help others.” Blackstock is a native of Clinton, Mississippi, where she resides with her husband, Ken.]]]]> ]]>