New Book Review: Where Hope Begins

Title: Where Hope Begins 

Author: Beth Adams

Date: 2026

Quote: "[T]hat cabin gets quieter every day, and some mornings I'm not sure I've got anything left to give."

Pastor Jerrod works on a mission--building a church in mostly secular Australia, out among rural "stations" surrounded by oceans of red dust desert. It's lonely work, even before his best buddy dies. Then, before that loss has even had time to sink in, a churchgoing couple die and their four children must be taken back to the sponsoring church, in Alabama, to find adults willing to rear a teenaged girl and three little boys. 

Jerrod doesn't realize that his younger sister's college roommate has wanted to go to Australia ever since she was five years old. Hearing about the red dust at church fired her imagination. She might have liked to have been sent out on Jerrod's mission. 

So when they meet and find each other attractive...they quickly apply the brakes and filters recommended by some "conservative" churches. No "romance." No "feelings." They have to talk and think rationally, pray, and decide whether it's best for the mission if they go back as a couple and adopt the four children. 

Can even missionaries from "conservative" evangelical churches do romance as levelheadedly as Clara and Jerrod? I don't know, but this book certainly offers good role models for those who want to try. While reading I kept comparing Clara with Rebekah, the Bible character whose story might have inspired hers. To prevent romance going wrong, Rebekah's people arranged marriages, and Rebekah had to make a levelheaded decision to rush out at once and marry the kind of man she wanted to live with. Clara and Jerrod at least have a chance to base their decision on the way they see each other interacting with their parents and the children.

This is a second edition of a book published in 2011. While reading, I wondered whether the manuscript could have been tightened a little. Maybe not. This is a novel for readers who like to linger over the very words people would have said, the landscapes around them, the recipes for the meals they share and the principles of construction they use on the job, and of course the full text and context of the Bible verses they quote. For its intended audience the pace and length may be just right.