THE LAST SIN EATER by Francine Rivers

"The what?" you say. It's what I said when a dear friend recommended this book to me. "Never heard of it. Sounds like a Ted Dekker suspense novel or something."

"Oh it's NOT!" she says. And though we hardly EVER agree on what is a good book, I was in the agonizing state of out-of-books. So I checked it out at my wonderful library - and got completely blown away.

When Granny Forbes passes away, her granddaughter, Cadi, is devastated. But she goes to the funeral with the healer's words ringing in her ears, "Cadi, you must listen. Do not look at the sin eater. He has taken all manner of terrible things unto himself. If you look at him, he'll give you the evil eye, and some of the sin he carries might spill over onto you." The sin eater? She finds that, in order to have your sins taken away, the sin eater must come and perform the ritual to take your sins upon himself. But as Cadi keeps her eyes shut tight, his voice startles her into looking right at his eyes - and so begins her curiosity to know who he is. With the shame of a terrible sin that has stolen her mother's love away from her, she wants to find the sin eater and have her sins taken away. Maybe her mother will forgive her then. With the help of her friends Fagan Kai, Miz Elda, a strange man by the river, and an even more mysterious girl named Lilybet, she sets out to find out the truth - maybe she can be set free.

This book has a VERY strong Christian message! I was very happy to give over my utter despair of contemporary Christian novels. This book is filled with mild (but not unhealthy) suspense and Christ's teachings. There is violence from the fiery leader of the town who is completely run by his temper, who beats two people up and even kills a man. The writer did an excellent job depicting the Sin Eater: a shady, mysterious character that keeps you wondering and shivering. There are always those characters that seem as if they are behind a black sheet - you hear their voice and see their outline, but not their features; and no matter how hard you look, you can't see anymore until the end and the sheet falls. Rivers does a wonderful job with many characters such as this. The language is clean, but a woman in the story says that her drunk father, "took it in his head that it was his right to use me like a man used a woman" and her lover quickly dispatched the man in anger. But Cadi does not understand, and since we hear the story through her eyes, nothing is taken further. Cadi's brother, Iwan and a girl were described as "tangled up together in the woods". The girl's father calls her a harlot and it is implied he turns her from the house, but they are not central characters and it is not further spoken of, nor is anything described in any detail. I would recommend this book to anyone old enough to understand the consequences of sin and death, probably about ten years and up. But if you think your little ten-year-old would be afraid, maybe you should read it out loud and make explain some things, but there's no reason they should miss out. YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK!!!!!