4-Star Review of "Retribution"

Review of Retribution

by Regina Smeltzer

Lillian Hunter’s life is destroyed when she’s implicated in setting the fire which killed her husband and daughter. Seeking peace and restoration, she pulls the pieces of her shattered life together and accepts a position at a college in another state. Surrounded by a loving family that has adopted her as their own, Lillian struggles with new life, new love…and new danger. Fires are being set in which she is once again implicated. Doubting her own sanity, Lillian takes steps to ensure she isn’t setting the fires. But if it isn’t her, who is it? And why, after she’s moved halfway across the country, have they followed her? A day of reckoning is coming as Lillian seeks to exonerate herself and claim retribution for the destruction of her life. Will she discover the truth before her new life is consumed by the flames? 

MY REVIEW:   She moves to avoid the control of her parents, but her past seems to be following her.  Her new job at a small college may be threatened if people find out about her past.   She was the prime suspect in the house fire that killed her husband and young daughter, but she was never prosecuted.  She maintains her innocence.  Now someone is burning homes again and setting her up the guilty party!   She is shocked and upset over the  fact that she finds gas cans in her car, after one home fire.  She falls in love with a man named Roger and he is very unusual, but she also has a strong attraction to Paul, a local police officer.  Roger convinces her that Paul will lock her up in prison if he finds out about her past.   Did she set the fires and just doesn't remember?  Is she innocent or guilty?

          This book had a great deal of suspense and thrills at every turn of the page.   It does look look like she is guilty, but will she  bef ound guilty and end up in prison?  I really enjoyed this book and was caught up in suspense, but my one complaint is that I had a hard time keeping up with the different characters.  

         I rated this book 4 stars and recommend it to readers of Christian fiction.

         This book was a gift and I have chosen to review it.

About the Author:  

On the day I was born we had an unexpected spring blizzard. There were 2,900,000 U.S. soldiers in Korea, and a deadly earthquake shook a still unstable Germany. While The King and I opened on Broadway, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of spying. Apparently my birth didn’t change much - the weather and world events are still unpredictable.

My passion growing up was reading. I would immerse myself for hours in Nancy Drew or Cherry Aims. When I couldn’t get to the library, I would grab the next volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica from our book shelf. Most families had a set back then. The exotic places and new cultures I read about drew me like a moth to the dangling bulb outside my bedroom window. I think I eventually got to Volume Q.

After graduating from high school in Akron, Ohio, I moved south, all of 60 miles. I became a registered nurse, married, and raised four children from three continents - my own United Nations. During this time I wrote short stories for my flock, plays for my church, and grants for my job. My adventures took me to the rain forest of Brazil and the desert of Egypt.

Without dreams, one is dead. Since I am very much alive, my dream is to share my love of reading with others. I still remember my first day of writing. I sat at the keyboard and wondered how one “began” a novel. Five years later I had it figured out, but to this day that manuscript remains hidden in a blue thumb drive tucked safely in my underpants drawer. 

The world might be the same, but life has changed for me. I have moved another 600 miles south, to the exotic Pee Dee region of South Carolina with its cotton fields, Spanish moss, and boiled peanuts. Four grandchildren keep me humble. But I still crave the path seldom taken, and hope this is reflected in my writing.

Just as God guides my life, He will mold my writing until it is what He wants it to be.