When Through Deep Waters

Alicen McCaffrey’s whole world just came crashing down. Her perfect life that she worked so hard to build all fell apart when her daughter died. After one suicide attempt, she goes back to her hometown with a childhood friend and gets checked into a psychiatric facility there. She knows she’s losing it, but now she’s seeing little children and speaking to things that aren’t there. She can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore. There are dark shadows at work here, and all she has to lean on is a hymn from her childhood that she keeps hearing: “When Through Deep Waters.” Will she be able to find the light, or will she succumb to the darkness?

I really don’t enjoy Christian fiction, first of all because it seems like an oxymoron, and second the authors tend to take Scripture very liberally to suit their purposes. This book was no exception. When the author begins to equate magic and Jesus and claims to be Christ-centered, she is being hypocritical. What she was writing about was not Christian, just spiritual and mystical.

There was almost no depth to any of the characters in this story. If Alicen was real, I would be seriously concerned about her actual recovery. All of this is my own opinion, obviously, and I am sure there are tons of people out there who would enjoy this. But for me personally, I did not enjoy it, and it bothers me that it is called Christian suspense when there was nothing Christian about it. Just call it suspense or even just fiction since there wasn’t anything suspenseful about it. Taking Scripture out of context is not helpful for anyone, and books like this is what make people think that just throwing Jesus’ name on something makes it Christian. But it’s really not.