From the Back of the Book:
Hannah Mattox has Pulmonary Hypertension, a heart disease that prevents her from safely bearing children. Karla Valez is a homeless prostitute who despises the “thing” growing inside her and hopes to kill it in-utero with the drugs that have ruled her life—and buried her painful past—for nearly five years. Andrea Greene, founder of the Sanford Crisis Pregnancy Center, finds herself the bridge between these two women. A time when questions far outweigh answers, there is one most pressing: why would God allow this?
Weaving together the lives of three very different women, Loving will take readers on an emotional journey that reveals one common thread: the need to surrender to a God who loves.
About the Author:
Corin Hughs wrote her first “book” the summer after third grade, an illustrated children’s book about the principle of compromise (the main characters were pigs!). Many years have passed since that book, but she never stopped writing. Her first novel, Loving, will be available in October 2013. Now, in addition to writing novels, she delights in writing notes of love and encouragement to her children. Corin married her high school sweetheart nearly 10 years ago, and they have three young children. Please visit www.corinhughs.blogspot.com to learn more.
From Me:
Corin Hughs does a well-balanced high-wire act of painting the convergence of three very different characters in three very different life stories. Corin’s voice is strong, her characters are relevant, and the issues she covers in this book are hard-hitting in many ways. Besides the obvious tough stuff like drug abuse, prostitution, abortion, etc., Corin handles the more delicate issues of the longing for children, the fear of rejection by foster-parent/adoption programs, and even the stigma of being childless in a Christian marriage.
Corin draws her readers in with lots of vivid details, with strong story-telling skills, and with a straight-forward open-eyed response to why bad things happen to good people, in a way that many inspirational authors skirt around or shy away from altogether. I’m impressed by her commitment to present Christ and His grace and love in a way that goes so much deeper than the oft-sugar-coated Jesus we see in much of today’s Christian fiction. As much as I could determine, Corin sticks to biblical truths with a boldness I found refreshing and resonating.
My only (small) drawback of this book was that it covered so many topics (and the resulting back-stories) that there were times I had to “reset” my thinking for fiction reading. Although Loving had a beautiful, poignant, and redeeming ending, I sometimes felt more like I was reading a memoir, and not fiction. In some ways, that’s good – Corin made these characters seem real – but in other ways, it made it more difficult for me to live vicariously inside the story. There were times I felt like I was being told these women’s stories, rather than participating in them.
Overall, I thought Loving was a beautiful, timely, and inspired book about women and the charge we have to lay down our lives for each other in love, especially as believers. This story made Christ real, and that’s a remarkable victory.
Corin, thank you for trusting me with your novel. I was richly blessed by your voice and I look forward to reading more from you in the future!
Braveheart 