In Broken Places

Title: IN BROKEN PLACES

Author: Michele Phoenix

Publisher: Tyndale

May 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4143-6841-2

Genre: contemporary

Shelby’s life isn’t glamorous, but it is predictable—and that’s the way she likes it. A survivor of her father’s violence, she has spent a lifetime creating a safe existence devoid of dependence. But her carefully managed world begins to break when, under staggering circumstances, she becomes a single mother to four-year-old Shayla.

In a drastic attempt to escape her childhood’s influence, Shelby moves to Germany, but she quickly discovers how intimately linked memory and healing are—and how honestly she must scrutinize her past in order to aspire to a richer future. As she juggles a new job, a new culture, a new daughter, and the attention of an enterprising man, Shelby’s fresh start becomes a quest for the courage to be not only a survivor, but someone who prevails.

IN BROKEN PLACES is the first book I’ve read by Ms. Phoenix. The story is well-written, but heart-wrenching. It isn’t set all in modern times, alternating between Shelby’s childhood and the present day. A victim of child-abuse, Shelby is desperate to start over—when her brother dies, leaving her care-giver to his young daughter. Shelby moves to a new country to work in a mission school.

The book was hard to read at times, but it has good message, and is well-written. This is not a quick read, but one to be read slowly. It really gives you a heart for someone who is fighting demons not of their own making. $12.99. 368 pages. 3.5 stars.