Drums of Change

By Janette Oke
Bethany House, $15.99

ISBN 1556618182

New Culture Latest Subject for Oke

Can anyone capture the pioneering faith of women in the West in stories as intriguing as those of Janette Oke? Time and again she has brought this era and this area of the country alive for readers in the Love Comes Softly series, the Seasons of the Heart series, the Canadian West series, and the Women of the West series. In her most recent release, Drums of Change, she turns to a culture that has been rarely featured in Christian fiction, that of the Native American.

Drums of Change is the story of Running Fawn, a young woman of the Blackfoot tribe in southern Alberta. Like many of her people, she is caught in the changing times of the late 1800s. White settlers have crowded in, the buffalo have been slaughtered or driven away by prairie fires, and her people must take up residence on assigned reservations.

This is also the story of a young minister of the Gospel, Martin Forbes, who learns the tribal language, travels with the tribe, and is known as Man With The Book. He is instrumental in sending Running Fawn and the chief's son Silver Fox to a mission school in Calgary--much against Running Fawn's will. She must learn sleeping in a bed, eating with different utensils, bathing in tubs rather than streams--all is strange. Oke does not give Christian readers what they might expect from this basic premise. As always, she has fully entered the world of her characters and offers a truer and more complex story.

Running Fawn leaves the school to return to the tribe to care for her father and the ailing missionary as well. There she finds her father has embraced the white man's religion which creates an even greater inner struggle for Running Fawn. How she learns to love the white man's God in the face of tragedy after tragedy is a great testimony to God's love and power. It's also another unforgettable story from Janette Oke.

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