Book of the Month October 2005

Book of the Month

Aborted by the world

by Brittany Henderson
October 2005

The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers, 374 pages, 1997,
ISBN 1410400492, £9.02 (hardback), available on www.amazon.co.uk

This is a powerfully written and evocative book on a subject that women deal with, but mostly never talk about. Though fictional, it was written about and for women’s real stories dealing with rape, abortion, and pregnancy.

Dynah Carey is in the beginning of a perfect life (so she thought), a freshman at a Christian college, engaged to the dream guy, going to get married in the summer. Everything was going perfectly, until one cold winter night she gets followed from her job, and is grabbed by some man whose face she cannot see, and raped in the bushes. Probably just a few hundred metres from her dorm, she was far enough away for him to escape without trace. After that her life as she knows it falls apart. It is replaced by reality, in all of its dirt, confusion, and decisions.

The people that are supposed to be the most understanding are the ones that push her into a corner. Though the author is a Christian, the book makes no pretences about the realities of the people inside churches. It cuts through the argument on both sides of the abortion debate, and shows what the woman and the child actually go through. In one memorable scene, her classmate confronts the dean of the Christian college with piercing truth.

“Do it! Go ahead! I’d like nothing better than to go before the board of directors and tell them what happened in here. I wonder if they’d share your narrow-minded, self-righteous view of how to handle the situation.”

“Get out of my office! Now!”

“I’ll get out of your office. I’ll even get off your campus! But first, I want you to know what you did.” He walked to the edge of the desk and jabbed a finger at him. “You aborted her.”

From the fear that she evokes that night, the confusion in life, and all of the subsequent choices that Dynah faces – she puts a face and name to the most unspeakable evils of our time. Make no mistake though, this heroine does not roll over and die as a victim. This book does not parade the victim mentality of the popular TV shows, or the politically correct notions that are debated on Senate floors. It also slices through the core of America itself, as this controversial topic – abortion – gained momentum to become one of the most emotionally charged and debated issues in the country’s history.

The previous generation in the book dealt with the same issue during the Vietnam years, with Roe v. Wade, and all of the women’s rights movements. Francine Rivers doesn’t stop there, at the outside of the discussion. She goes inside the abortion clinic, she listens to their stories, and she hears their real thoughts and fears. Dynah is really a compilation of over a year of work listening to the real stories of many women on both sides.

This is one of the most poignantly written works I have ever read, and the plight of real women after all of the TV cameras and the ProLife and ProChoice rallies is shown here. Unafraid to tell the truth, Francine Rivers takes us into the closet with the girl, listening to her prayers and hearing all of her real thoughts. What started out to be a flat, fairly predictable, Protestant character turns out to be more evocative than Hester Prynne, the woman in Scarlet Letter.

This book is full of so many twists and turns, plots and subplots, that it will keep the reader on the edge of his or her seat the whole time. It has been a while since I read a book that really made me examine my own life, my own heart, and my own views. Beautifully written, the story of a woman’s deepest fears and the largest choice find their place on paper.

Brittany Henderson is a student of Azusa Pacific University in California,
and is currently working as an intern at Vivid.