5 stars out of 5!
“I’ve found that there are two ways people react to suffering. They either run to God or run away from him."
Mike Dellosso, best known for writing Christian horror novels, switches genres and the result is an emotional roller coaster that focuses on suffering, grief, and ultimately redemption. I cannot tell you how many times I felt on the precipice of tears with this book. Like one of my favorites, Charles Martin, Dellosso pens many, many lines in this book that hits you like a gut punch, causing you to feel the raw pain and emotion of the book's characters. While Dellosso often writes in a quick, no-filler style, he makes the most of less is more and somehow deliver more emotion and impact than most authors out there. "A Million Miles From Home" is one of those books that will stay with you for many years and many miles to come.
One of the things that impacted me so immensely was the relationships in this book. First, the relationship between Ben and his daughter Elizabeth Grace, whom he calls Lizzy. I will admit I might have been impacted more than the average reader with this because I have a young daughter named Grace Elizabeth! *A quick side note, I am simultaneously reading Tim Downs' Head Game about father who loses his wife and has a daughter named Grace, so it's been a rough, emotional week of reading for me!* The love, the pain, the joy, the sorrow between Ben and Lizzy felt so real that I definitely feel like Dellosso wrote their parts perfectly. Along the same lines, the love between Ben and his wife Annie was special and again, the grief was evident and portrayed well by Dellosso. He did a stellar job writing about Ben's father and I liked the redemption aspect of it as well as Ben's journey of self-discovery with that relationship.
But one of my favorite relationships in the book, and one I wish was explored a little more after Ben's move back to North Carolina, was between Ben and Tom. They had this wonderful back and forth friendship where Tom provided both a physical and emotional shoulder for Ben and his family to lean on, always providing words and encouragement. The character reminded me a little of Big-Big in Charles Martin's masterpiece "Long Way Gone." One the phrases of Tom that really stuck with me dealt with Ben's anger toward God about the loss of his wife. "I think God is a big enough God that he can take a little rantin’ and ravin’ from us. He knows your heart, son, and he loves you more than you could ever love him back. He knows this is somethin’ you’re gonna need to wrestle with a bit. You just keep on wrestlin’, you hear? Can’t promise you’ll get your answer but it’s in the wrestling that we learn to surrender.” And it's in these words that Ben's journey ultimately lies. How to go from blaming and being angry to God to turning to God, even when we don't or can't understand. Because there are two ways that we react to suffering...we either run to God or run away from him.
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