Review: The Longing Season by Christine Schaub

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The Longing Season ~ by Christine Schaub

The Longing Season (Music of the Heart #2)

By Christine Schaub

Publisher: Bethany House

ISBN: 0764200607

Summary:

In the 1740s, British culture allows few options for the son of a merchant ship captain. And in a time of war, a man with John Newton’s experience must serve the king. But Newton–a man who quotes Virgil and curses God with equal fervor–is interested in serving only himself.

Mary Catlett simply cannot believe her childhood friend sailed away on a British warship and vanished in Africa. In desperation, she takes a step that will change her life and call her lost love home. But will he arrive in time?

Newton’s odyssey takes him from the West Africa gold coast to the banks of Newfoundland to the heart of the Atlantic before he finds what he’s spent his entire life longing for: deliverance.

In an account that challenges popular myth, Schaub continues the MUSIC OF THE HEART series with one of the greatest redemption stories of all time–the story of “Amazing Grace.” 

Nature conspires against him, tossing the ship like a toy. Directionless—just like his life.

It seems his odyssey will end here, in the cold Atlantic.

Grief and terror grip his heart, but he will not surrender . . . not yet.

She reads the sentence again and again. The first day I saw you I began to love you. He’d written the words, sealed and posted them, then vanished.

She has a choice–turn toward the future, or wait, watching and hoping.

And so begins her season of longing.

Review:

“Amazing Grace” has long been my favorite hymn, and with the upcoming film releasing February 23, I was eager to learn more about the man behind the lyric. The words of that timeless song can tug at the heartstrings like few others. Somewhere along the line I picked up the story of the John Newton’s dramatic conversion to Christianity and renunciation of slavery while captaining a slave ship caught in a violent storm. It turns out that truth does not quite match the legend attributed to his life. However, after reading The Longing Season, I would posit that the truth of Newton’s life, though it may lack the “light bulb” moment and some of the drama of the legend, is an altogether more satisfying, stirring, and powerful portrait of the grace and transformative power of God at work in one man’s life.

The Longing Season is both a redemption story and an exquisitely told love story. The novel is framed by an older Newton recalling his younger, rebellious years. The bulk of the novel focuses on Newton’s early life and the events that shaped his character. Schaub paints a powerful portrait of the events and choices that brought Newton to the point that he could write the words to “Amazing Grace” and know with every fiber of his being that those words represented the truth of his life. The story seamlessly alternates between Newton’s experiences and those of Mary Catlett, the woman who would become his wife. The two conducted a long distance, clandestine courtship and love affair that transcended distance, separation, and years of anxious uncertainty. As Newton reflects at one point in the novel, Mary was a living, breathing expression of God’s grace in his life.

For most of the novel, its hero is quite unlikable. But I think that has more to do with the fact that if you’re brutally honest with yourself when reading Newton’s story, you’ll be able to admit to relating to the “pre-saved” Newton in some way — if not in action, than in thought. The Longing Season does not look at life through rose-colored glasses — it’s at times painfully honest, but always heart-wrenchingly real in its portrayal of man’s sinful nature and the power of Christ’s redemptive work. Christine Schaube write with the pen of a master wordsmith, and her skill imbues the novel with a literary, almost lyrical quality. It’s a story worth savoring that will stay with you long after you finish the final pages. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by: Ruth Anderson

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