I’m a bit behind with my book reviews. I hope to be back on my regularly scheduled Wednesday reviews soon.
I received a copy of Lost Mission by Athol Dickson through a blog post by his agent, Rachel Gardner. I’ve heard of his previous novel River Rising, but have not read it. You can visit Dickson’s blog here.
Lost Mission carries us between 18th century southern California and modern day. Dickson introduces us to Fray Alejandro, an 18th century Franciscan priest adventuring to the newly settled America to build a mission. The story also leads us to Lupe, a humble Mexican shopkeeper, who feels God has given her a mission – to be a missionary to the people of the United States. We follow both their paths as events in the 18th century resurface in modern day.
As I began reading Lost Mission it took me a couple of chapters to adjust to Dickson’s merging of the two stories. Keeping up with all the various characters and their sometimes long names almost made me give up on finishing it. A couple of chapters in, though, I was hooked. I was unsure how the two stories would intersect, but the circumstances each character from the different time periods experiences pulled me more and more into the story.
Dickson weaves the two seemingly almost unrelated stories together in an amazing tale of mystery, fear, grace and forgiveness. If you enjoy historical fiction you will enjoy the mixture of this mixture of historical and modern day. I really enjoyed they way Dickson weaved the historical story and its modern day implications.
Thank you to Rachel Gardner for the complimentary copy to review.
