Redeeming Love
Recent Edition Cover
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| Author | Francine Rivers |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Bantam (first edition) Multnomah Publishers (since 1997) |
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Publication date
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1991 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 432 pp (first edition) |
| ISBN | (first edition) |
| OCLC | 24801369 |
Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers is a historical romance novel set in the 1850s Gold Rush in California. The story is inspired by the Book of Hosea from the Bible. Its central theme is the redeeming love of God towards sinners.
The story starts off in New England, 1835. Sarah, a beautiful young girl, meets her father, Alex Stafford, for the first time. Six-year-old Sarah learns that she is the product of Stafford's adulterous affair with her mother, Mae. Mae was urged to abort the child, but refused to do so. This decision separated her and Alex and left Mae depressed. Sarah begins to think that she is to blame but she hopes Alex never comes back.
Later on that year Mae's maid Cleo begrudgingly takes Sarah with her on a trip to the seashore, so that Mae can have a private visit with Alex. Cleo takes Sarah with her into a popular brothel where Cleo is well-known and has a male companion. After getting drunk she agrees to sleep with him while Sarah waits in the hall. After this man leaves Cleo heartbroken again, Cleo in a half-drunk stupor tells Sarah "God's truth" and forces a frightened Sarah to listen to her say that no man ever cares for a woman and all they want is sex.
Mae and Sarah then move to a shack on the docks, where Mae takes up prostitution to make ends meet. Her reputation is known all over town, and young Sarah is forced to suffer the rejection of the townspeople because of it. Through this experience, Sarah learns to mask her emotions and replace them instead with a hard exterior.
A few years later, Mae dies to a terrible illness, leaving Sarah alone at the age of eight with a drunken man named Rab. Unsure of what to do with the small child, Rab seeks a home for the child. He finds a man that is looking for a little girl for his wealthy master. Thinking that this is Sarah's lucky break, Rab takes Sarah to the wealthy neighborhood. They are greeted at the door by a woman who urges Rab to take Sarah away and not come back. Not dissuaded, Rab insists that Sarah is perfect for this rich man. The woman admits the pair and sends them to a bedroom upstairs where they are instructed to wait until her master can see them.
Duke, the master of the household, welcomes Sarah and Rab; minutes later, Rab is strangled before Sarah's eyes, his body dumped in a nearby alley. Duke, who is a pedophile, had been scouring the town not for a new daughter, but a new mistress. Duke informs Sarah (renamed by him Angel) that there are many things he wants to teach her. He gives her first "lesson" that very night.
After about 10 years with Duke, Angel finally escapes and boards a ship bound for California. Robbed and forced to the option of prostituting herself instead of being raped by the mostly male passengers, she disembarks in San Francisco with nothing more than the clothes she is wearing. Angel is taken in by 'The Duchess', the owner of The Palace, a brothel in Pair-a-Dice and becomes an exclusive, high-priced prostitute. Employed by the Duchess, Angel is guarded constantly, her meager earnings kept from her. Her only solace is Lucky, a fellow prostitute that is often drunk. Lucky reminds Angel of her mother.
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