Despite promises of eternal joy given by the Tree of Life, a privileged young woman loses everything in a brutal war. Her husband disappears; her family is murdered; her home is burned to the ground.
Desperate, starving, and burdened with an unwanted child, she now despises and rejects the Tree she once worshiped. Ripped from her land and people, forced into survival immigration, she becomes a refugee serving in the homes of the rich. Her unusually gifted child thrives, but is an ever present reminder of ultimate loss and betrayal.
Two women: one broken, the other rooted in bitterness, continue to be drawn towards the song of a Tree that will not let them go. Along roads of degrading poverty and equally destructive wealth, each much wrestle with the siren call of perfect love, and its altar sacrifice of perfect trust.
A Thing Devoted chronicles two years in the life of a Christian family devastated by adultery and divorce.
Three, adopted, multi-racial children, struggle with the question of God’s seeming indifference to their pain. Ten year old Abster, a tiny spy in the house of loss and confusion, keeps a daily record of her observations.
“If you attend church weekly, and on time, are attentive in Sunday school, get full immersion baptism, tithe more than ten per cent, volunteer in the nursery, pray for missions, and really, truly believe in God, shouldn’t you be protected? Shouldn’t He keep terrible things from happening to you? I understand my obligations to Jesus, but what are His, to me?”
This intimate story of one family's journey through fire, considers the purpose of suffering, its defining nature, and ultimately its life giving power.