If anyone but my friend Carole had handed me a book series like Penelope Wilcock’sThe Hawk and The Dove, I would have found a way to smile politely, tumble together a sloppy “thanks but no thanks; too busy” and pass them back to the giver as if I were playing Hot Potato. Carole, a brilliant friend possessing the equivalent of a black belt in classic literature, pressed the stack of three books in Wilcock’s original trilogy on me back in the days when they were three separate books. (They’ve since beenrepackaged as a single volume.) She knew me well enough to know I’d instantly judged them to be Christian pulp fiction, even with the cover lacking the near-requisite macho Amish man or feisty yet innocent 17-year old homesteading heroine. They featured monks on the cover, for Pete’s sake, but I was still suspicious. [read more]
