Return To Me

A proclamation given. A people freed. A Temple to build. A prophet in the making. "Return to Me" by Lynn Austin gives a fictional accounting of the lives of the Israelites who were freed from their Babylonian captors. They were told to go back and rebuild the temple. Using the Bible as her plot outline, Ms. Austin pulls out the hardships faced by these newly freed people including their varying degrees of passion towards the building project. I'm not going to lie, the first half of this book seemed endless. It took a long time to trudge through but suddenly and without warning, I found myself pulled into the characters and encouraged by their passion for God. Do I long for Him like that? The idea of His Holiness surrounded me. Surprisingly, once the book ended I was sad. I love this genre and thoroughly enjoy fiction based on Scripture. Austin's books based on the Kings are fantastic. Perhaps because of this previous love, I set the book up too high in my mind before even starting and didn't give it a fair chance. I think it's worth the read but I can't say it floored me the way some of her other works did. BTW, I got the book free in exchange for an honest review.