I love Scotland and have happy memories of vacations there with my family and later with my husband. So knowing that the characters of Sanctuary were seeking a new life in Scotland made me keen to read the book. The inclusion of the words to the famous hymn, “Faith of our Fathers” in the introduction intrigued me too, as I remember singing it often in my Catholic elementary school. And a book about the Huguenots with a title character called Rachel Levin has to be fascinating.
Rachel is Jewish, and the book opens with some very revealing details of Jewish life in Europe in the 1700s. The juxtaposition of despised Huguenots and despised Jews certainly makes the reader think. And the characters’ conversations give more food for thought. There are evil villains, in particular a military captain who dedicates his life to chasing after Rachel, but there are also surprising helpers; Catholic monks, fishermen and even noblemen who seem to risk all to protect the innocent.
Behind it all, there’s the question of Rachel’s culture and faith. Will she confess who she is? And will she fall for the man she is pretending to be married to? Will she be drawn into his Huguenot faith?
The novel is the first of a series but presents a delightfully complete story in its own right. I hope I might get to read the others sometime, but meanwhile I’m grateful to thechrstianpulse.com for this introduction to Molly Noble Bull’s writing.
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My Grandfather Harry McCready's family came from Scotland to Avella, Pennsylvania and started the Presbyterian Chuch there. At the present time there is a restored log cabin called the Robert McCready log cabin in a place I think is called Woodcroft Village. I was there on a visit when the village was just being built (with my son who is 37 now) and then back to visit with my parents along with my mom's sister Jeanette (Mccready) Smith who was married to a Mormon Carl Smith and raised a family in Phoenix, Arizona.
She and Carl were foster parents to some 37 children and adoptive parents of five. The Mormon belief is that if all the names of deceased family members are collected in a journal and presented to the Temple (in Arizona) those people's souls can be taken to Heaven by proxy. I am a Lutheran as is the rest of our family but respected my Aunt and her wish to make the pilgrimage to Penna on two different summers to visit the cemetaries that holds all our family members. It was indeed an interesting time when much was learned by us all in sharing memories and notes about the ones gone before.