Unexpected Dismounts by Nancy Rue

Reviewed by Nora St. Laurent

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"This is a thought provoking story that will stir your heart and get you asking God to equip you for what He has ahead. I highly recommend this series. It’s a keeper."

Allison, Chief, Desmond and the other colorful characters you’ve grown to care for are back in this sequel to The Reluctant Prophet. Allison can’t understand that after she’s let God completely turn her life upside-down she’s hung-up on a situation that happened to her twenty-five years ago. She struggles as to why this person still makes her temper rise and gets her thinking crazy. She heard God so clearly when He asked her to start Sacrament House, a shelter for former prostitutes and adopt Desmond a young boy in seventh grade, but now the nudges she had from God aren’t loud. Did He disappear? It’s a hard thing to let go of the control and let God work creatively in messy parts of her heart and life’s startling situations.

Allison’s been stretched to think outside the box, and ask what would Jesus do? The Lord did say in this life you will have struggles but trust me. I am the way, the truth and the life. Allison walked down a narrow path her Christian friends don’t think she should be on. Nothing was neat and tidy anymore. They didn’t quit know how to handle the new her. She rides a Harley Davidson and has experienced a few unexpected dismounts. She’s had to trust God to pick her up because her friends have turned away.

Allison challenges her church friends to listen to that still small voice, let God prepare your heart for their circumstances and trust not on her own understanding but let go of control and act on what God has laid on your heart to do. It’s scary! I like what I heard someone say “God doesn’t always call the well equipped, but He definitely equips those He calls.” Nancy Rue does a brilliant job of showing this very thing in both novels.

I’m thankful for the review copy and would recommend you read The Reluctant Prophet first so you will experience the richness of the characters and depth of the story. I was inspired by Allison and her courage to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a practical way. I enjoyed reading about her personal growth as a person and in her faith. I like how the Lord nudged her to wash people’s feet. She shrugs off this notion as being ridiculous at first, but she keeps hearing it. When she says to the Lord she is willing to wash feet, Allison starts asking whose feet? I wanted to give you a peek into what she says, “I’m washing your feet because I want you to know that I’m here to serve you, no matter how nasty and gross and full of fungus that service might turn out to be. It’s what the people of God are called to do for each other…It’s what all human beings ought to do for each other. I – no all of us in the Sacrament House Ministry are here to wash your feet. Literally. Maybe then you’ll experience the kind of love it takes to come to the table with more than your money. What we want goes deeper than that. We want to wash you so you can become part of the story. Our story. The big story.”

Oh, if the body of Christ were the hands and feet of Jesus the way Allison and the Sacrament team was. This is a thought provoking story that will stir your heart and get you asking God to equip you for what He has ahead. I highly recommend this series. It’s a keeper.

Nora St. Laurent is the CEO of The Book Club Network Incorporated and runs two book clubs near Atlanta, Ga., and is the former ACFW On-Line Book Club coordinator. Nora currently writes a Book Club column for the Christian Fiction OnLine Magazine and is a Book Club Talk "Columnist" for Novel Rocket. She writes reviews and interviews authors on her blog Finding Hope Through Fiction, Novel Reviews, Title Trakk, Suspense Zone and The Christian Pulse.