ACRBA Tour - Mirage by Jeanette Grant-Thomson

8 - 12 June 2015

Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance

is introducing

Mirage
(Ark House Press)

By

Jeanette Grant-Thomson

About the Book:
Miraim is desperate. Her mind is a fog of drug-induced forgetfulness. She has forgotten her past, her family, even who she is. But who is the disturbingly familiar girl in the shopping centre?

Enmeshed in Soleternity, a cult in the Queensland outback, Miriam is pregnant. She believes her future - and that of her baby - lies with the cult.

Bronwyn is determined to rescue Miriam. She has not bargained on falling in love with the journalist helping her.

Away from Soleternity, Miriam faces conflicts. Sol . . .Soleternity . . .and now Anna and Christianity. How can she know the truth? Who is to be trusted?

About the Author

Jeanette Grant-Thomson has been writing since she was a child, having short pieces published. Her first book was Jodie's Story (Anzea 1991 and two later editions), followed by two more biographies and two novels. She is a teacher and a writer, living in Redlands.

My Thoughts:
I was initially reluctant to read this book because of the subject matter that it deals with - cults.
It's not something you think about much, and they are not really heard about much, unless something goes wrong and there is a news story about one, or an expose on one of the current affairs programs. In reality, you don't want to have to think about them, but you do need to be aware that they do exist; and the reason they exist is because we live in a sinful, broken world.

The way this book was written also makes sense in light of a recent blog post that Jeanette did about her own search for God. Not that she was in a cult, but she was searching for God and He did draw her to Himself.
It makes me think of something I read a long time ago, where Blaise Pascal brought up the context of all of us having a "God-shaped hole".
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” 
- Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)