Book Review/Longings of the Heart
Longings of the Heart
By Bonnie Leon
Book Two in the Sydney Cove Series
Revell
A division of Baker Publishing Group
Paperback $12.99
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
Popular slice-of-life novelist, Bonnie Leon of Glide has just published “Longings of the Heart,” the second in her series called Sydney Cove. It continues “To Love Anew,” the first of the series, which was previously reviewed in Currents. This 14th book of historic fiction with a Christian slant, continues to follow the protagonist Hannah Talbot Bradshaw as she suffers from guilt over her past. The book answers the question of whether these hidden secrets will destroy the love she had built with her husband, John to settle their own piece of land in New South Wales, Australia.
As in several of her latest series, the setting is in the Australian outback in the 1880s, a time when the land was filled with possibilities as settlers staked out their own piece of land, much like the settlers of the Western United States. Leon is a smooth writer who takes the reader right into the pages of her books that are laced with authentic
settings based on extensive research. Her books are alive with page turning action.
Bonnie says storytelling has always been an integral part of her life. “From childhood, I cherished the legends and family history handed down through my Aleut ancestors, she said, and these legends and family history led her to use Alaska as a setting in her early books.
Bonnie says she dabbled at writing but didn’t seriously consider becoming a professional author. That all changed in June 1991when a log truck hit the van she was driving. The near fatal accident left her badly injured. After months of rehabilitation, physicians told her she would never be able to return to normal life. To keep herself sane during this long recovery period, she began writing stories in longhand because she did not own a typewriter.
“I asked God to direct me toward something to do that mattered,” she said. She knew she had the answer when her husband, Greg, came home one day with a typewriter he had found at a dumpsite. At that point she started writing more seriously and her writing won a scholarship to the Oregon Christian Writer’s Summer Conference which launched her writing career. Her first book, “The Journey of Eleven Moons,” was published in 1994. “The learning never ends,” she says, “but I relish the challenge of becoming a writer known for quality storytelling.”
In the first book of the Sydney Cove series, Hannah is forced to leave the only home she has ever known in England, taking with her the only thing she has left, her dignity. She is hiding a burden of past guilt when she meets John Bradshaw on a prison ship headed to Australia. Both are suffering from a past they hope to put behind them in the bond of marriage and an opportunity to build a new life in the raw outback of Australia. As a master storyteller, Boonie creates characters and dialog that make her stories believable.
Such as her character, Deidre, who attempts to blackmail John and Hannah by revealing the past Hannah has hidden, which enlivens the plot. Also, when John brings home an orphan named Thomas it builds tension in their marriage, all fictional fodder that creates page turning action.
Like all her stories, there is a life message and in this part two of the series Sydney Cove, Bonnie’s emphasis is on character and integrity. She is a much sought after speaker at women’s church groups, business functions and writing groups. There is a Roseburg book signing for “Longing of the Heart,” scheduled on Saturday, Dec. 6 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Living Hope Books Plus, 1350 N.E. Stephens St., Roseburg.
(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812.Roseburg, OR 97470)