“Firstborn” is my favorite Robin Lee Hatcher novel to date. It’s written in a way that reaches the reader’s heart on a very personal level, and it made me feel as though I were there.
When Erika was sixteen, she fell madly in love with Steven Welby. They spent every minute of an entire summer together, and when he left to go to college, she thought her heart would break. Out of loneliness, she and his best friend made a mistake – they sought comfort from each other, and Erika became pregnant.
No one knew but her grandmother. They arranged for Erika to go to a boarding school far away from home, and she gave the baby up for adoption. When Steven finished college and came back for her, she let him think that nothing had changed. They married and had a son, and their lives seemed perfect.
But then Erika receives a letter from the daughter she gave up. Now in her early twenties and a career woman, Kirsten is moving out to Idaho for her job, and she will be living not far from Erika. She wants to know her mother, to meet her father, and to reconnect with this piece of herself that’s been missing for so long. Erika badly wants to see how her daughter has turned out, but that will mean telling Steven everything. And Steven doesn’t take it well.
This Christian novel weaves messages of forgiveness and repentance through the plot without being overly heavy-handed with the religious teaching. We see Steven work through his rage at his wife’s deception and his best friend’s betrayal, and we see how the hand of the Lord in the characters’ lives helps them to reunite a family that is falling apart. I enjoyed the plot, the characters seemed real to me, and I highly recommend this book.
(This book was published in 2002 by Tyndale.)
Related Blogs:
Hints for Avoiding Objectionable Content in Books