The Missionary: A Book Review

Thanks to everyone who participated in the giveaway contest for Tessa Afshar's Pearl in the Sand! Congratulations to Karen Lange, the winner of this new novel :) Check back with us for new giveaways throughout the summer and thank you all for sharing your summer reading picks! ~Stephanie S. Smith, MP

By: Christy Lockstein, originally posted at http://www.cafelibri.com/

Christy blogs at http://www.christysbookblog.com/ and reviews books for Amazon, Christianbook.com, Barnes & Noble, Lunch.com, Shelfari, GoodReads, and more.

The Missionary

Yesterday David Eller was an American missionary serving the poor in Venezuela. Today he is an international fugitive.

Synopsis

David Eller rescues impoverished children in Caracas, Venezuela, with his wife, Christie. But for David, that isn’t enough. The supply of homeless children is endless because of the massive poverty and the oppressive policies of the Venezuelan government. When the CIA gives David an opportunity to do something more—to heal the disease rather than working on the symptoms—he decides to go for it. But little by little, he falls into an unimaginable nightmare of espionage, ending in a desperate, life-or-death gamble to flee the country with his wife and son.

Christy's Review

The Missionary by William Carmichael & David Lambert is a pulse-pounding thriller about how an innocent man's actions can shake an entire nation.

David Eller loves his job as a missionary at the Hope Village in Caracas, Venezuela working alongside his wife Christie and their young son Davy. But he's angered by the children who are devastated by poverty and neglect on the city's streets, and he doesn't always keep his comments quiet in a country run by a megalomaniacal dictator.

His political views bring him to the attention of a man who asks David to do just a couple of small, simple tasks, but when the country suddenly faces an attempted coup and David can't contact the mystery man, he and his family are on a race to save their lives.

The authors really keep the pages turning through shady alliances and non-stop action. The reader wants to shake David repeatedly as he acts without thinking, but it's an integral part of the character and a vital plot element.

My only complaint is with the character of Davy. Early in the story, he is described as having ADHD; David even calls him a hummingbird on steroids, but never once in the story do we see Davy showing any symptoms of ADHD. Not through running for his life, capture for the government, and other traumas does he display any of those characteristics. If the writers had left out that description at the beginning, Davy would be portrayed well. If they had thrown in a few scenes of him acting out to his mother's terror, it would have been powerfully moving, but as it is, that part just doesn't work. Davy is, however, only a minor character, so this small flaw does not detract from the thrilling action.