My Hands Came Away Red

For the last three years, I’ve been stuffing my head with books filled with words like “interface” and “Boolean” and “metadata.” You know, academic books—or “monographs” as we librarians like to call them. But sometimes I read books for fun. Mostly on holidays and long weekends. Which is really a shame because fun books have sentences like, “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it” and, “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

Academia knows how to stifle potentially wonderful sentences, doesn’t it?

About this time last year, I decided I’d had enough of mundane scholarly articles and forced myself to dive into the world of fiction. This one particular fun book caught my eye because of it’s gruesome title.

My Hands Came Away Red.

Scary right? Sounds like mystery. And murder. And tragedy. Normally I would have passed without a second thought. Because, well, I’m a sissy. I have a strict no-gore, no-scare policy. I still sleep with a night light, readers. There’s no way I’m reading creepy, bloody things. But I found it in the Christian Fiction section. And Christian Fiction isn’t really gruesome. It’s just a fact. So I glanced at the back briefly and decided just to trust my gut and take it home.

I didn’t leave the couch for the next 5 hours.

It’s a story about a girl. A girl who decides to take a break from her complicated love life to help build a church for a small village in Indonesia. Just when they’re about finished with the construction, violent conflict erupts between the Christians and the Muslims. Mass murder. Blood. Fire. And six stranded teenagers who flee into the jungle for escape. They fight discouragement. Anger. Starvation. Malaria. Fear. Doubt. Murderers. And must find a way home without getting killed in the process.

Normally, I’m not much of a Christian fiction fan. But Lisa McKay does a really good job portraying truth and realism without spoon feeding the gospel in a couple of cheesy paragraphs. It’s refreshing. She handles faith as a central theme of the story, but it’s not overwhelming. The novel seems most appropriate for teens, but her sentences are so engaging and thoughtful, I’d recommend it for older crowds as well. Inspiring.

So inspiring, I actually wrote the author an e-mail. I’ve been alive 26 years, and how many books have I read? I’ve never once written to an author. But something made me do it. I told her how much I appreciated her sentence structure. Her themes. Her flow. I told her it made me want to turn back to the pages of my own unwritten novel. But I never expected her to write back.

Two months later, she did. And this is what she said:

Hi Carrie,

I’m sorry for the delay in reply. I got married in Australia in January, and spent two months away from California. When you wrote I was on honeymoon in New Zealand. What a wonderful season of life.

So, getting back to normal life now. I’ve been back three weeks, and my husband, Mike, has been back in Papua New Guinea (where he was when we met) for two of those! He took a short term contract with Oxfam. So it’s been an unusual start to married life, that’s for sure. But I’ve been using the time to do some writing, which is good! That and answering some email.

Thanks so much for writing to tell me you enjoyed the book, that’s fabulous, and needed encouragement to keep working on the project I’m plugging away with at the moment! I hope your own writing is going well.

All the best,
Lisa

I couldn’t believe how personal this e-mail sounded. Married? Honeymoon? Work? It’s like we’ve known each other for years and she was catching me up on her life. I immediately found so much respect for her as a writer because she took the time to respond to me. Me. Some random girl across the Internet who tripped over her book. And I provided her encouragement? What a beautiful thought.

I learned later that much of her book was based on personal experience in her travels and missions. Although it’s fiction, it’s based on real conflict and real experiences. Which is probably why the writing is so vivid. So captivating.

It’s this kind of fun book that makes me want to write. I’ve been practicing. Trying to get sentences to flow out my fingers. But I think in order to write well, you have to read well. And now that I’m almost done with academia, I should have more time for books like this.

There you have it. My first official recommendation on Sunday Book Club.

Also, my first official recommendation as a Librarian. Which means you should probably read it.