Spy of Richmond by Jocelyn Green - REVIEWED

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing Spy of Richmond River North (March 1, 2015) by Jocelyn Green

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jocelyn Green is a child of God, wife and mom living in Cedar Falls, Iowa. She is also an award-winning journalist, author, editor and blogger. Though she has written nonfiction on a variety of topics, her name is most widely recognized for her ministry to military wives: Faith Deployed. Her passion for the military family was fueled by her own experience as a military wife, and by the dozens of interviews she has conducted with members of the military for her articles and books, Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives and its sequel, Faith Deployed...Again: More Daily Encouragement for Military Wives. She is also co-author of both Stories of Faith and Courage from the War in Iraq & Afghanistan and Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front (forthcoming, May 2012). Her Faith Deployed Web site and Facebook page continue to provide ongoing support, encouragement and resources for military wives worldwide.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Trust none. Risk all. Richmond, Virginia, 1863. Compelled to atone for the sins of her slaveholding father, Union loyalist Sophie Kent risks everything to help end the war from within the Confederate capital and abolish slavery forever. But she can't do it alone. Former slave Bella Jamison sacrifices her freedom to come to Richmond, where her Union soldier husband is imprisoned, and her twin sister still lives in bondage in Sophie's home. Though it may cost them their lives, they work with Sophie to betray Rebel authorities. Harrison Caldwell, a Northern freelance journalist who escorts Bella to Richmond, infiltrates the War Department as a clerk-but is conscripted to defend the city's fortifications.

As Sophie's spy network grows, she walks a tightrope of deception, using her father's position as newspaper editor and a suitor's position in the ordnance bureau for the advantage of the Union. One misstep could land her in prison, or worse. Suspicion hounds her until she barely even trusts herself. When her espionage endangers the people she loves, she makes a life-and-death gamble.

Will she follow her convictions even though it costs her everything-and everyone-she holds dear?

My Thoughts:

“Soldiers who had endured four years of privation and battle died in a moat, at the hands of an enemy they could not see, for a cause that they could now win.  The living stumbled and scrambled over those who fell, searching  frantically for a place to get into the fort.”  (p. 389)

The Civil War was so very, very brutal.  Jocelyn Green captures the nuance of the loyalties that caused families to rip asunder in violence.  Sophie Kent chooses to become a spy, and her choice costs her greatly.  Being courted by a Confederate soldier doesn’t simplify anything – at all.  And the lives of the slaves…so  very horrific….and yet they risk everything for their freedom! 

Jocelyn doesn’t miss any detail in this story, and time and time again, your heart pounds in anticipation of being discovered, of being betrayed, of hurting those you have come to care about.  You literally see this War from every conceivable angle.  And you see FAITH at in its most raw form.  A faith that had to hang on with there was nothing to hang onto!!

This is a powerful look into the double edged sword that was the Civil War.  May our faith be strengthened with the example of our forefathers?  May we be ever as faithful!!

If you would like to read the first chapter of Spy of Richmond, go HERE.