Redeeming Love
Francine Rivers, 1991
Romance Historical fictionEssaysContemporary fiction
A California farmer is told to marry a woman hardened by the Gold Rush—and to love her without asking for anything back. A tender, slow-burning frontier romance with lyrical prose, a steady faith undercurrent, and moments of real dread.
Feels like dread, tenderness and hope. About family, love and faith.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy historical romance with a Christian frame, patient character work, and a love story that asks more of its hero than passion alone. The explicit faith arc and 1991 Christian-romance conventions may feel preachy or dated if you want a secular, brisk romance.
Why read it
It offers a patient look at love as commitment rather than rescue, and the Hosea retelling gives familiar romance beats a moral and spiritual seriousness.
A page from the book
The difference between being someone’s partner and someone’s god.
No, you won’t. And I won’t be enough for you, Amanda. I don’t want to be the center of your life. I want to be part of it. I want to be your husband, not your god. People can’t always be there for you, no matter how much they want to be. And that includes me. Francine Rivers.Rivers was a successful secular romance novelist before her Christian conversion; Redeeming Love, her retelling of Hosea, was first published in 1991 and revised in 1997.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Redeeming Love for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy historical romance with a Christian frame, patient character work, and a love story that asks more of its hero than passion alone. The explicit faith arc and 1991 Christian-romance conventions may feel preachy or dated if you want a secular, brisk romance.
- What is Redeeming Love like?
- A tender, slow-burning frontier romance with lyrical prose, a steady faith undercurrent, and moments of real dread. Feels like dread, tenderness and hope. About family, love and faith.
- What should I read after Redeeming Love?
- If you liked Redeeming Love, try It Starts with Us (Colleen Hoover), The Great Alone (Kristin Hannah) and The Color Purple (Alice Walker).
A taste of the feed
How to hold a love that ended without filing it under failure.
Maybe the idea of love ending being a negative thing is simply a matter of perspective. Because to me, the idea that a love came to an end means that, at some point, there was love that existed. And there was a time in my life, before you, when I was completely untouched by it.
It Starts with Us · Colleen Hoover
The child who keeps the whole family from tipping over, and knows it.
Leni was afraid to stay and afraid to leave. It was strange—stupid, even—but she often felt like the only adult in her family, as if she were the ballast that kept the creaky Allbright boat on an even keel. Mama was engaged in a continual quest to “find” herself. In the past few years, she’d tried EST and the human potential movement, spiritual training, Unitarianism. Even Buddhism. She’d cycled through them all, cherry-picked pieces and bits. Mostly, Leni thought, Mama had come away with T-shirts and sayings. Things like, What is, is, and what isn’t, isn’t. None of it seemed to amount to much.
The Great Alone · Kristin Hannah
Where do you look for God when prayer stops working?
God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit. It? I ask. Yeah, It. God ain’t a he or a she, but a It. But what do it look like? I ask. Don’t look like nothing, she say. It ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself.
The Color Purple · Alice Walker
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