Fiction is valuable. Stories—even if they didn’t actually happen—have the potential to open our eyes to new perspectives and perhaps even change our opinions on important issues or assumptions we have always held and expect we always will.
In the best novels, all of this perspective-changing is done within the pages of a good story, one that resonates with us, inviting us in and keeping us engaged until the very last sentence. These stories stick with us, challenging or affirming our preconceptions and ultimately reminding us of the complexity of life.
Here are four novels that might do just that.
Safely Home
Randy Alcorn
Safely Home follows a successful American businessman as he travels to China to catch up with (and establish business connections through) a Chinese friend of his college days. Ben Fielding is surprised to find his former study partner is now a pastor in an underground church. As he watches the struggles and sacrifices of Li Quan and his family and fellow Christians, Ben begins to wonder about his own faith and life—and how this trip will change everything.
Through Alcorn’s storytelling, we see a privileged, successful-American-dream life juxtaposed with a Chinese Christian living in poverty and persecution. Perhaps, once we’ve experienced this story, we’ll look at our own lives a little differently.
“In three minutes,” Scarbrow said matter-of-factly, “we will shoot every man and woman—and child—who does not declare himself loyal to the people rather than the gweilos, foreign devils.”
Soft groans erupted across the room. Quan turned slightly as Wu Le’s wife put her hands over her mouth. No—this couldn’t be…
Ben Fielding was on an airplane headed to Seattle, Tokyo, and Shanghai…He was stuck in the comfort of first class, wondering if accomplishing these goals would ever make him happy. Was happiness an illusion? Something you strove for and never attained? Maybe the Dalai Lama had the answer. Nobody else seemed to.”
No One Ever Asked
Katie Ganshert
No One Ever Asked explores the aftermath of a school board decision to bus students from economically disadvantaged and racial minority South Fork to affluent, predominantly white Crystal Ridge. The title grabbed my attention as I looked through the Christian fiction section at the bookstore. Soon the opening lines were drawing me in, and it turns out the whole book wouldn’t let me return to normal life until I read every page. No One Ever Asked is many things, but it is most of all a very engaging story. My favorite kind.
The story is told through the perspectives of three women—a long-time Crystal Ridge mother who appears to have the perfect life but whose family is ripping at the seams, a new Crystal Ridge mother struggling to bond with her recently adopted Haitian six-year-old, and a South Fork graduate starting her first year of teaching at Crystal Ridge. The events of that school year push all three women to probe their own hearts, and when tensions in the community snap, the unexpected ripple effects ultimately bring healing to several fractured lives.
“For a long time, Jen assumed Camille’s life was perfect. She assumed she didn’t know the first thing about hardship. But then she learned of Camille’s separation. And now there was this.
Proof that everyone had struggles. Significant struggles.
Somehow the realization made her own feel less…isolating. Less…daunting.
The rain fell harder outside.”
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
My aunt loaned Guernsey to me, and to be honest, at first I was not impressed. The book sat untouched on my shelf for months, until I decided I just had to read it so I could return it. A few chapters more and I fell in love with the story of Juliet and the people of Guernsey, an English island occupied by the Nazis during the war. An epistolary novel (a novel written entirely as letters between the characters), Guernsey is set in post-WWII as England was still recovering from bombings and grief. Juliet, a London writer, received a letter from a Guernsey resident, sparking a pen pal relationship that went farther than anyone expected. Through it all, we read of the drama that unfolded on the island and the unlikely characters that bonded together and made life-and-death decisions. While there are a few swear words and a couple of brief references to homosexuality, overall it was an incredible book.
“If you have time to correspond with me, could you answer several questions? Three, in fact. Why did a roast pig dinner have to be kept a secret? How could a pig cause you to begin a literary society? And most pressing of all, what is a potato peel pie—and why is it included in your society’s name?…Yours sincerely, Juliet Ashton.”
Deception
Randy Alcorn
In Deception, Randy Alcorn seems to have enjoyed channeling his inner sarcasm through the character of Detective Ollie Chandler. A bitter, jaded homicide detective, Chandler refuses to take seriously his friends’ arguments for Christianity—until a murder case unlike any Chandler had ever worked pushes him to consider what he had always though impossible. If he can only stay alive long enough to find the answers.
While earlier books Deadline and Dominion are also captivating stories, Deception stands out—likely due in part to Alcorn honing his writing ability in the ten years between Dominion and Deception. Alcorn’s story is a page-turner, with edge-of-your-seat action keeping you glued to each chapter. Chandler’s profession as a homicide detective is gritty and often dark, and Alcorn doesn’t shy away from that. Through Chandler, we see how Jesus offers hope to people accustomed to living without it.
“That second murder turned me, my job, and my friendships upside down. It shook all the change out of my pockets. It threatened to bring down a police department, end my career, and place me inside a white chalk outline, with some other homicide detective trying to figure out who murdered me.
Not one of those 204 cases prepared me for that next murder, where sinister eyes, hidden in the shadows of a violated house, gazed out at me through a broken window. It was the most unconventional and baffling case I’ve ever worked.
It that’s not enough, my investigation threatened to end the lives of people I cared about.
And, ultimately, that’s exactly what it did.”
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash
