Ransomed Dreams by Sally Johns (Book Review)
When I started reading Ransomed Dreams I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d never read any other books by Sally Johns. The prologue starts off with a bang as the main character relives the terrorist shooting that has left her husband an invalid and herself a fearful recluse. But from the very first chapter this story is totally character driven. It deals with broken things. Broken relationships. Broken dreams. Broken health. Broken trust.
Eliot Montgomery, US Ambassador to Venezuela before the shooting, and his wife Sheridan, now live hidden away from everything and everyone they once knew, in a tiny Mexican village. Eliot lives in a half-drugged state most days, oblivious of his wife’s needs and loneliness. Sheridan lives in fear of the world outside their tiny orbit, resentful of her husband’s pain, and at odds with the path that God has set her on.
When Sheridan receives a message from her older sister that their father is dying, she doesn’t want to go, but the message indicates something more—family secrets to be revealed—so she reluctantly leaves her husband with friends from the village and goes to Chicago for the funeral.
Ransomed Dreams is the story of one woman’s journey through the darkest days of her life, searching for answers from a God she has always conversed with, but now can’t seem to hear. It’s the story of forgiveness and love. It isn’t filled with clichés or easy answers, but with pain, doubt, anger, temptation, and ambivalence, that only Christ can heal, bind-up, or allow the strength to endure.
Ransomed Dreams is a story that grows on you as you delve deeper. There are times I didn’t like the characters very much, other times I could feel exactly what they were feeling. Sally Johns has a way of getting to the heart, cutting back layers one at a time until her characters are revealed—bare, open, and needy. Which in reality is the moment Christ desires to cover each of us with his redeeming love.
Tyndale House Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book.
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