Her Mother's Hope

This Francine Rivers novel was very good. This was my 1st book written by her, but I have a couple friends who told me I HAAAD to read all of her books! I'm really enjoying her writings.

Marta knew she wasn't going to live like her dressmaker mother and tailor father. They were cheated out of money and had little. Her father did not think or speak highly of her right out of the womb. An outcast within her own family. She had a younger sister and brother and an ailing mother who loved her.

Marta was hired by other families to do jobs and was paid in food and sometimes money. Her father wanted everything she made. Marta was not happy. Her father finally sent her to a school where she would learn to be a servant. Her father expected her to pay back the tuition. She made money making the uniforms at her school and had no problem paying her father back...slowly. She was not going to be pushed around and paid less wages than expected. Her mother encouraged her to go and do something with her life. She never returned home. Not when her mother died, not after her sister committed suicide, and not when her father demanded she return to help him in the shop.

Marta traveled and educated herself in different languages and different skills. She knew she would open her own boarding house one day. That's exactly what she did when she found herself in Canada. She fell in love, got married, and had a child.

The war had started, and her husband being German, times were going to get tough. He got a job and had to move away. She stayed behind to have her child. She didn't want to travel away from her boarding house.

I don't want to give the whole story away, but it's very good.