Into the Fire

Erin Healy is known for her award winning editing skills and her two books co-authored with Ted Dekker: Burn; Kiss. In Never Let You Go by Erin Healy, published by Thomas Nelson, readers get a picture of supernatural interference into the troubled lives of Lexi Solomon and her nine year old daughter Molly with images and figures which seem real and surreal at the same time, alluding to the collision of the natural and supernatural.

Lexi struggles with two jobs to provide for them since her husband Grant left her and Molly seven years before the story begins. Lexi is still legally married to Grant even though she’s divorced him in her mind a long time ago. With sweet-spirited Gina added as a roommate in their small apartment to help watch Molly when Lexi has to work, they’re getting by. Sort of.

When an acquaintance from the past appears at her car one night after her late-night waitressing shift, Lexi begins to fear for their safety. Evidence of this man’s intrusion into her home creates an atmosphere of escalating, threatening fear even though at first Lexi feels more angry than scared. What this man expects Lexi to do demands more than she can rightfully imagine, but as the time looms for her decision all hell breaks loose.

Grant, Molly’s dad, learns the horrible lessons of his past behaviors while spending four years incarcerated for what happened to be a trumped up charge. Meeting a man from inside who’d turned his own life around, Grant hears the difference Jesus can make. Not quite ready to trust himself with complete faith in God, Grant is still able to turn his life around as far as being clean of drugs and engaging the remote possibility of returning to his wife and child. Not sure Lexi can rectify his past with his present, Grant incorporates Lexi’s mom to mediate a letter to his daughter. Only after doing so does he realize this is probably a bad idea because Lexi and her mom carry on an estranged relationship since the tragedy of years ago caused all kinds of separations in their family.

Painted windows which somehow show up clean, words in a letter which change into different words, physical attacks which result in smoking clothes with no person in them, accidents which should be fatal but produce non life-threatening injuries, and rooms which appear but do not exist—all these happenings implicate the interference of both good and evil forces warring against Lexi and Grant who separately labor to hold onto the bare threads of faith in Jesus and His ability to forgive them. However, in the process of realizing the power of that forgiveness, Lexi learns of her double-standard for applying it when she’s forced to take hard looks at her past in order to remedy her present. 

It’s difficult to review this novel for fear of ruining the different plot elements. Erin gives us pictures of lives destroyed by the tools of the enemy used to captivate and enslave people within an evil enclave incorporating its presence into our reality. When the protection of the supernatural meets the destruction of the same, those who’ve found where their true strength resides will eventually triumph.

Erin does a good job of characterizing Lexi as a beat-down but feisty, insecure but stubbornly self-righteous, young woman who tends to see others’ sins as a bit worse than her own even though she has a healthy measure of her insufficiencies. We might get fed up with her attitude, but Erin brings her to a place of such courage and the dawning understanding of her weaknesses, we feel the necessary compassion for her to keep us hoping she’ll make the right decisions in the end.

With Grant, Erin gives him just enough self-loathing for us to root for his success, for his complete turn-around, and for his ability to defeat the evil stalking him and his family.

With a satisfying ending and the obvious revelation of a particular character, there are enough suspenseful occurrences and plot challenges to keep the reader flipping pages. Since I read a lot of these kinds of novels, some things came as no surprise to me. Others might wonder about the different happenings and characters right up to the end when the main characters discover who will really never let them go.

Pacing amps up toward the end to allow Never Let You Go to take on a thriller feel.

http://www.amazon.com/Never-Let-You-Erin-Healy/dp/1595547509/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283213059&sr=1-1

Father, you’ve given Erin multiple skills, many talents. Please continue to supply her with stories and bless her efforts to bring you glory in her writing. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.