“Redeeming Love” by Francine Rivers

Redeeming Love triggers: physical and sexual abuse, self-harm, rape, and childhood sexual abuse. 

Let me just start by saying that when I first read this book, I was 15, and far more conservative (I know, *shudder*). I’ve read it so many times I needed a new copy, and it remained my favorite book for over a decade…until after a few years, I decided to read it again. And holy hell. This book should be called “Problematic White Man With a Superiority Complex Sets Out to Save Sexually Abused Woman by Gaslighting, Controlling, and Judging Her into Stockholm Syndrome.” 

This novel is a biblical-fiction book that was written in 1997 (for which I would forgive the author some of her ignorance, but her newer books carry the same underlying message). Its premise actually comes from the book of Hosea in the Bible; in this book, the prophet Hosea is commanded by God to marry a prostitute named Gomer. Yeah…kind of a weird prophetic book to base bib-fic off, I know. 

In the novel, the prophet Hosea is represented as an 1850 Californian farmer named Michael, while Gomer is represented as a girl named Sarah, whose “brothel name” is Angel. Angel was an illegitimate child born of a narcissistic white man who instructs Angel’s mother, Mae, to abort her. Mae keeps Sarah, but dies when Sarah is only 8 years old. Sarah is then sold to a brothel owned by a man named Duke; she was only 8, and the drunk who sold her was then murdered right in front of her.

Sarah is brutally sexually abused by Duke until she is old enough to be sold to other men. She tries escaping prostitution only to be brutally raped again and left on the street for dead, with nothing else to return to but another brothel. Here she is upheld as the most expensive, beautiful, and ‘well-equipped’ prostitute, and crushed under the thumb of the brothel owner, Duchess, and an abusive bodyguard, Magowan. 

One day while he is selling his farm goods in town, Michael Hosea sees Angel taking her weekly walk with Magowan, and claims that God has commanded him to marry her. 

Long story short: 

1. Michael marries Angel
2. Michael “makes love” to Angel
3. Angel goes back to prostitution and pays her ride in sex
4. Michael goes and gets Angel
5. Angel runs away again 
6. Michael goes and gets her again
7. Angel runs away one more time for several years until she finally comes back, realizing “how much God and Michael love her”

Seems sweet, so let’s make the short story long again:

1. Francine Rivers rarely calls what Sarah goes through “rape,” often calling them “choices.” If you read the book, it’s clear that Sarah had absolutely no choice but to become Angel. 
2. Angel isn’t given a clear-headed choice in marrying Michael. Magowan beat her nearly to death, and when she was out of her mind from the beating, Michael asked her to marry him one last time, to which she half-consciously replies, “Why not?” 
3. The first time that Michael has sex with Angel, it is directly after she tells him she has no reason to want to live. Michael then, in his mental narration, claims to hear God’s voice say “tend my lamb.” In other words, he claims God said to comfort her by doing the same thing that’d been used to traumatize her thousands of times for ten years. He initially ‘resists,’ but ultimately goes through with it because he was “hard-pressed by his physical nature.” Clearly Michael was thinking with his head, but not the one containing his brain.  
4. The “ride” that Angel pays back in sex was Michael’s brother-in-law. It was rape, yet Francine Rivers refuses to call it as such. Michael blames his BIL, but tells Angel it’s her fault as well. 
5. Michael never gives Angel a choice on whether or not to go back home with him, but takes her back forcefully. 

Problematic passage examples (not including the usage of ‘heathen Indians’ several times throughout the book): 

1. Michael prays, “God, why her? Why not a gently reared girl, untouched until her wedding night? Someone who’ll get dirt beneath her fingernails but doesn’t have it already in her blood! Why do you tell me to marry a harlot?” 
2. Angel asks why God asked Michael to marry her. His reply: “Maybe he figured the horns in your head fit the holes in mine.” 
3. After Michael physically drags Angel back home: “Angel scrambled to her feet and ran from him in terror, heedless of the branches that slapped her face…[she stumbled and] lay panting for breath, her eyes enormous. The minute he loosened his hold, she tried to run again. He swung her back and took a blow. He almost hit her back, but he knew if he hit her once, he wouldn’t stop.” 
4. Angel is broken, trying to open up about how her own father wanted her aborted. She tells Michael she never should have been born. “He laughed derisively. ‘Self-pity. You’re drowning in it, aren’t you?’” Michael responds. 
5. Angel confesses to Michael that she was forced by Duke to have sex with her own father. Michael’s response: “[He] felt sick. God. God! Is there a sin this woman hasn’t committed?” 
6. Duke forced Angel to have her tubes tied. When she tells Michael she can never have kids, he prays in ironic self-pity, “God, why? John and Elizabeth have six children. Will I never beget even one on my wife? Why did you allow it to happen this way?” 

When Sarah finally comes back to Michael in the end, there are no apologies on his end. She claims to love him, but rereading this a few months ago, all I saw was Stockholm Syndrome. I can’t see any semblance of God’s love in this book, and I’m sad for the Taylor who prayed for years that Jesus would “send me a Michael Hosea.” Thank God that He didn’t! That relationship would have ended with a swift kick in the balls. 

Redeeming Love gets a 2/5, because Sarah’s spitfire personality does speak to my soul. I do, however, recommend the movie adaptation, which I give an 8/10. The religion-message is easy to miss if that part bothers you, and Michael is extremely kind and patient, giving Angel choices in place of force. It’s the love story I wish we’d seen in the book.