Composing Amelia: A Novel

Alison Strobel

Sep 2011 · David C Cook

About this ebook

Can a brand-new marriage withstand the weight of generations-old baggage? Newlyweds Amelia and Marcus Sheffield are recent college grads, trying to stay afloat in LA while searching for their dream jobs. Marcus hopes to become a mega-church pastor. Amelia has an esteemed music degree, and longs to play piano professionally. The Sheffields are clearly city people. But when a small town church offers Marcus a job, the couple’s dedication to their dreams and each other is tested. After a risky compromise is made, Amelia falls into a dark emotional place, where she finds skeletons she’d fought hard to deny. In desperation, she calls out to God. But why can’t she find Him? While Amelia struggles, Marcus learns news that nearly crushes him. He must lean on his faith to withstand the pressure… or risk losing his wife forever.

Ratings and reviews

A book that goes to a depressing place quick and the reader is stuck there for most of the book. With mental illness, lost career goals and a move away from home, this book is chocked full of hard issues that are confronted head on. Amelia is new to the Christian faith and married to Marcus who has his dreams wrapped around following in his father's footsteps to be a pastor of a church. They both come from backgrounds that didn't have the best role models to learn how adulthood should be. It made it interesting to see how each reacted to becoming an adult and overcoming the obstacles that come with responsibility. A Christian fiction work that wasn't all rainbows and perfection, with real life problems that couldn't just be prayed away - I liked that there was realism in Christian fiction. This book isn't for the faint of heart. I would only recommend it to readers who are ok to go to a sad place and don't mind a read that is heartbreaking and devastating.

Made me think. It really makes you realize that you don't know what is going on in someone else's mind. Enjoyed the different situations to think about God, and how to relate with Him and listen to Him.

About the author

Alison Strobel, whose father, award-winning author Lee Strobel, instilled her with a love of stories at a young age, has written four novels, including Reinventing Rachel. She has also written the children’s books That’s Where God Is and That’s When I talk to God with her husband Dan Morrow. She lives in Colorado with her husband and two daughters.