Birdsearch. Arcturus, 2021.

Bridsearch is a collection of word search puzzles all dealing with the subject of birds. While I am indifferent to word search puzzles (I prefer crosswords and sudoku), this caught my attention because of the birding aspect. It was cleverly done, with many distractors. For example, one of the words in one puzzle was cowbird. One of the strings said cowbire. Was it a typo? No, cowbird was hidden in the puzzle as well.

This covers birds all around the world. While I know North American birds and have had some knowledge of birds of England and Brazil, I was unfamiliar with many Asian, African, Australian, and Pacific Island birds. These birds appear in the puzzles as well.

I learned more about birds around the world by doing these puzzles and researching their names. For example, people familiar with birds know that rails are hard to see. They prefer tall grass, usually in wetlands. Many are nocturnal. Some are flightless. I learned that one species has a reputation of being so hard to find that its common name is the Invisible Rail. Interesting stuff here, even if word searches are not your favorite game.

Lewis Thorpe and William of Poitiers. The Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Invasion. Folio Society, 1973.

Readers familiar with the Folio Society understand that it publishes some original works but mostly classics in elegant editions. The Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Invasion is an original with a classic included.

Lewis Thorpe gives us some historical background to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 followed by his translation of what is probably the earliest written account of the invasion by William of Poitiers from the Gesta Guillelmi Ducis Normannorum et Regis Anglorum (The History of William, Duke of the Normans and King of the English). The original was probably written in 1073 or 1074.

This is followed by a brief description of the Bayeux Tapestry, which gives us a clue to what to look for in this famous and unique work of art. Nearly half the book is pictures, namely pictures showing the complete 230-foot (70 meter) embroidered work. The pictures are carefully and clearly done with English translations of the Latin as captions.

This is a special edition. We get a basic history of the events leading up to the invasion and a description of the military maneuvers. There was no printing press in 1066, so we do not have details that such an invasion might have produced in our time. This covers the circumstances pretty well for what we do know. And, indeed, we would know less if it had not been for the famous embroidery that illustrates the story.

Of course, the Folio Society always has first class paper and binding. Unlike many of their products, however, this did not come with a slipcase.

The Tapestry was probably produced before 1078. While clearly siding with the Normans (as does William of Poitiers), it presents a fairly straightforward narrative. Thorpe notes in his introduction that later writers tended to embellish details concerning the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings. For example, later writers would say that King Harold first was shot in the eye by an arrow. After fighting bravely for a long time, he was eventually killed and his body cut into pieces. Neither William of Poitiers nor the Tapestry indicate anything like that happening.

For a straightforward account of the Battle of Hastings and access to images from the entire Bayeux Tapestry, this is the place to go. In its August 1966 900th anniversary of the Battle issue, National Geographic does also have beautifully assembled photographs of the entire Tapestry, but here is the most reliable primary source and more background to this famous work of art and epoch-changing conquest.

Douglas Van Dorn. Giants. Waters of Creation, 2013.

Giants, subtitled Sons of the Gods, presents a discussion of one of the more curious Bible mysteries, namely, who are the Nephilim? The word Nephilim is used a few times in the Hebrew Scriptures and is usually translated “giants.” Using ancient commentaries and Jewish apocryphal writings, Van Dorn makes a case that these were giant people (7-12 feet or so [2.1-3.2 meters]) who were somehow offspring of humans and fallen angels. This is one interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4, which is one of the more opaque passages in the Bible.

Although tradition tells us that the Nephilim were one of the reasons God caused the great flood, the term is also used to describe a few larger than normal figures much later who fought the Israelites, men like King Og and Goliath. Regardless of what the reader may think about the origins of the Nephilim, most of the book follows the Biblical history of Israel and Judah. Here, the important thing was to keep the Jewish nation pure to remain chosen and to maintain a proper line of descent for the Messiah. Some of this is both interesting and inspiring. God has a purpose through history.

Van Dorn notes that this is not specifically racial or ethnic. Rahab the Canaanite and Ruth the Moabite are part of King David’s and Jesus’ ancestry. He suggests that the Nephilim were not entirely genetic sons of Adam. Like the devil himself, they had a hatred for human beings and for God.

The book also brings in historical and mythological accounts of giants from all over the world. He notes that large skeletons and stories of giants are often associated with structures like ziggurats, pyramids, and mounds. It also notes them associated with some ancient circular structures. In many places in the world including Europe, the Near East, and the Americas, the current or more recent inhabitants have traditions that they settled after giants left the region, whether through conquest, disease, or migration.

The author, for example, notes that in Genesis 3:15 God tells the serpent, “I will put enmity between your seed and the woman’s seed.” That suggests that the devil could procreate—which seems to contradict Jesus who said the angelic spirits do not procreate. However, that passage of Jesus says “angels in Heaven,” (see Mark 12:25) so perhaps on earth it was different at one time.

Regardless, of what the reader thinks of that idea, most of the book tells of the survival of Israel in spite of spiritual, political, and military opposition up to the time that the Savior of the world could be born—one who was truly human and the seed of woman.

The book is well researched, and uses many primary sources. For example, it mentions the belief of the early Christian writer Irenaeus. Irenaeus is a favorite of mine, and I could see that Van Dorn did not misquote or misrepresent that ancient apologist. He also notes numerous archaeological finds of very large human skeletons and of unusually tall houses and other structures.

I confess a little skepticism about some of the author’s interpretations. I suspect he may be giving the adversary more credit than he deserves, but the Biblical presentation can encourage the reader. I am also reminded of Deuteronomy 29:29:

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever…

Some things of God are none of our business, but God is not offended if we ask (Luke 11:9, cf. James 4:2).

Rinker Buck. Life on the Mississippi. Avid Reader, 2022.

I born in Pittsburgh and lived there till I was eleven. I can still recall singing the song in school:

The river is up and the channel is deep
The wind is steady and strong.
Oh, won’t we have a jolly good time
As we go sailing along?
Down the river, oh, down the river, oh, down the river we go-oh-oh
Down the river, oh, down the river, down the O-hi-o.

I also recall reading a YA book back then called Down the Big River about a family taking a flatboat down the Ohio River in early pioneering times.

And then, when I was about ten, our family went on a little boat tour on the three rivers around Pittsburgh. I do not remember much of the specific details pointed out on the tour, but the captain of the boat said that in the off season he would sail down all the way to New Orleans. What an adventure! I thought to myself.

I have never had the opportunity to take such a trip, but I was excited when I heard about Life on the Mississippi, not the Twain classic, but a new book by a man who took about a year off (all told) to build a flatboat replica and sail it from the Pittsburgh area down the Monongahela, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. The voyage itself took about four months. This is his story and his reflections.

The title is a little misleading. There are twenty-two chapters in the book. He does not reach the Mississippi River until chapter 17. It might be more accurately be called Life on the Ohio and Mississippi, but using a familiar title makes the title easier to recall.

The first few chapters tell how Mr. Buck, the author, employed a replica shipbuilder from the Cumberland River in Tennessee to build a replica flatboat. He then had it trailed to Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh. Then he assembled a crew, which changed from week to week, and he floated and sailed down the rivers to New Orleans.

Buck reminds us that while covered wagons and the Oregon Trail are more a part of the American memory today, the West really opened up around the time of the American Revolution because of the intrepid people who sailed down the Ohio and its tributaries to the Mississippi. They settled all along the way and sold their goods including lumber, furs, crops, and coal down the river. New Orleans would become the primary port for American exports, a claim it can still make today.

A few years ago we reviewed The Frontiersmen, about an early Kentucky settler and his adventures and ordeals. Daniel Boone figured in that book. Boone himself eventually moved west beyond Kentucky and settled in Missouri. That book covered the period, more or less, from before the French and Indian War to the War of 1812 and beyond. While Life on the Mississippi is set in less a year in contemporary America, much of the book is a reflection of how we got to where we are.

To be honest, Buck takes a hostile, almost bitter, perspective on American history—industrial pollution, Indian removal, slavery. While The Frontiersmen does not gloss over these things, it is a little more respectful. Still, we cannot help admire Buck’s odyssey—with the assistance of radar, radio, GPS, electronic tablets, and the internal combustion engine. Imagine how much more challenging it must have been without those amenities, not to mention things like buoys and other aids to navigation, dams, and locks which also have done a lot to tame the rivers. We really do appreciate those pioneers. Buck maintains, probably correctly, those “river rats” did much more to open the West than the later wagon trains and railroads did.

Buck narrates Life on the Mississippi in the first person. He himself seems to have changed in the course of his story. About halfway through, I was thinking to myself that as much as I envy him taking this river trip, many things annoy him. I am not sure I would want to spend a few weeks on a small boat with him.

That would change. Buck changed crews frequently. People would join him and leave him for a few weeks at a time. Most people could not take the time off that he could. He tells us that he was caring for his elderly mother in Maine until she passed away. He had no other close family attachments or responsibilities, so he was free to pursue this dream. One particular person on his original crew annoyed Buck to the point of serious anger. The person who built the boat ignored most of Buck’s suggestions. Those things set a tone that for nearly the first half of the book. There is a lot of complaining—not just about the shipmate and shipbuilder but about many other things they had to deal with.

Once that person leaves the crew, the whole narrative and voyage take on a different perspective. Now it becomes an adventure. Now most of the people he meets on the river are kind, helpful, and encouraging. He comes to appreciate the massive transportation network the Mississippi and its tributaries created. Tug strings of upwards of twenty-five barges can carry so much more than so many tractor-trailers or even rail cars. The barges were perhaps his biggest navigation challenge, but he learned quickly that he could learn from them and sometimes even follow them the way a motorcyclist can slipstream a truck on the highway.

There is a lot of humor. While few writers are as clever or incisive as Twain, it is clear that Buck enjoys some irony. He loses track of the number of times he is warned about his trip. The currents, the huge tug strings, the wing dams, rip rap, submerged vessels and trees, criminal types along the shore could all put an end to the trip, or so he is told. He and his crew were warned a number of times that whirlpools on the river were strong enough to not only drown them, but strip them of all their clothing. That caused one of his crew mates to joke that he had duct taped his underwear to his body to avoid such a fate.

He also notes that a few people warned them that they were making a mistake not having any kind of gun or pistol on board.

Upriver, the off-duty cops and redneck river rats who had come aboard implored us to get weapons because the blacks in Vicksburg and Baton Rouge were going to pour over the banks to rob the boat. Downriver, black kids were convinced the rednecks were going to get us. The race-blind solution for all was the same: America, Get Guns. (356)

Even with all the amenities mentioned above, this was not an easy venture. Some things, such as an electric bicycle, turned out be invaluable. They had a few close calls navigating, and Buck twice broke some ribs. Having broken ribs once myself, there is not much anyone can do about it other than bear the pain till it goes away. Ribs really cannot be set or put in a cast.

Although there were a handful of days when Buck was alone on the boat, most of the time he had others for a crew. We are reminded that we all have different talents, abilities, and even personalities, and that because of that we do need each other. I was reminded time and again of another song about the boats on the river, “Proud Mary”:

People on the river are happy to give.

There might be some bitter history, but most Americans are really great people.

Davis Bunn. The Christmas Hummingbird. Kensington, 2022.

Before getting into the story of The Christmas Hummingbird, I have to say that the author did not do much research on hummingbirds. This story involves wildfires threatening a California community. Among other creatures, the hummingbirds are driven out of the woods. Eleven year old Liam rescues a suffering hummingbird and with the help of some friends, helps it recover. Inspired by Liam, the community decides to put up a hummingbird feeder in virtually every yard in town to attract the birds away from the fire zone and provide nourishment for them. So far, so good.

Alas, the author tells us that the birds are Rufous-Crested Hummingbirds. Those birds are found mostly in the Andes but they do range north to the very south of Mexico—not even to Baja California, let alone the American state. Now there are a number of species of hummers that nest in California, but by Christmastime they are long gone. The one exception is the Anna’s Hummingbird, which I have seen in the winter in southern California in and near San Diego.

The novel takes place in Miramar, which in real life is a section of San Diego, best known for its military air station (formerly Navy, now Marine Corps). However, we are told that our fictional Miramar is north of Ojai, which is north of Los Angeles. There could be winter Anna’s Hummingbirds hanging around there, but the farther north you go, the less likely.

Now that I have that out of the way, if we willingly suspend our disbelief about the hummingbirds, this is actually a well told story. Besides Liam, the two main characters are his single mother Ryan and the lonely divorcé Ethan. Ethan sometimes works as a set design artist for the film industry, but his day job is with the local bank. He has been deputized to help people in the higher elevations evacuate before they are trapped in the fires. He himself lost everything in an earlier fire. He also has a melancholy feeling about Christmastime because his wife left him right before the holiday six years before.

Ryan is a police officer. Liam’s father fled as soon as he learned she was expecting. That plus the fact that police tend to be skeptical of people in general, makes her very tender towards her socially awkward son but distant towards everyone else. I recall reading that police and journalists are the most difficult people to persuade about anything because in both professions they hear a lot of people lie to them. Ryan does not appear to believe in people or in love.

Not only are there these fires to contend with, but it appears that the fires may be set deliberately. Most of the homes affected by the fires are large homes owned by wealthy landowners, many of whom only live in them part of the year. It appears that someone may be burglarizing the houses after they are abandoned. The fires then cover any trace of foul play. The thieves seem to be well organized as a number of fireproof safes have simply disappeared from the homes.

Things are also complicated because many of the homes in the fire-prone areas are owned by people who wish to remain anonymous. A number of them are represented by an attorney in Belgium. The police and the bank both try to communicate the situation, but the lawyer simply tells them that he will contact his clients. Who they are and how to contact them is none of their business.

There is some exciting firefighting and crime solving in this tale, but the real story is the warming up of both Ryan and Ethan. I am not sure the word love is ever used in the story except to describe Ryan’s maternal love for her son. Still, that is what the story is about. Hurt people hurt people, as they say. But if the guard can come down a little bit, there is potential for healing the hurt. That means love. And that gives the story a surprising and tender depth—in spite of the inaccuracies concerning hummingbirds.

Alex Speier. Homegrown. Morrow, 2021.

It was not a hastily assembled championship team but instead one that had been painstakingly and sometimes painfully forged. (333)

Forging is hot and heavy work. So is the long professional baseball season.

Homegrown is subtitled How the Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up. It begins around 2010 and culminates in the 2018 World Series championship. While Red Sox fans would be especially interested in its contents, because it tells much about the front office of the Red Sox during this time, anyone interested in sports management would probably get a few ideas from this book.

While the concept of a homegrown team might be a little outdated in this era of free agency and thirty major league teams, the author makes a case that the core of the 2018 team had been put together for a number of years mostly from young talent first recruited by the Red Sox. It focuses on the career tracks of three young players who became standouts for the team in 2018: Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley, Jr., and Xander Bogaerts. Others who signed on a year or two later—Rafael Devers, Andrew Benintendi, Matt Barnes, Cristian Vazquez, Travis Shaw—also made an impact.

We learn about the scouts who travel all over North America, including the Caribbean, assessing young talent. We read about the short-season rookie leagues and various A, AA, and AAA teams. We also note the important Baseball Academy run by the Red Sox in the Dominican Republic. The author describes how changes to the draft system and rules for signing young players have changed over the years and may have made a difference. It is possible that under the present system no team could have signed as many future stars as the Red Sox did in 2010 before the rules changed again.

Frankly, Homegrown also tracks the shorter careers of some promising athletes who did not succeed at the major league level as well as some “minor league prospects” who were traded before reaching the majors. A recurring theme is that pitchers are the hardest to predict. For hitting, baserunning, and fielding, unless there is an injury or Steve Blass disease, there is a sense that a certain percentage of top prospects will have major league careers. Pitching is much harder to predict. While it is true that taller pitchers with longer fingers have a physical advantage, there are enough exceptions to make most scouts and general managers realize that signing a young pitcher is risky. Of course, so is not signing one.

Even though Speier’s thesis about scouting and bringing up players through a team’s own farm system works, he also points out numerous exceptions. In 2013 NESN commentator and Hall of Fame pitcher Dennis Eckersley was excited when Boston traded three top prospects and one current player for Cy Young winner Jake Peavy. It worked for the Sox that year as they won the World Series. However, nearly the only traded prospect mentioned in the book who ended up with any significant major league career was Jose Iglesias, who had brief call-ups with Boston in 2011 and 2012 but was still considered a rookie when he was traded.

Some of the biggest exceptions accounted for the Red Sox record-breaking 2018 season (108 regular season wins, 119 in all). They obtained slugger J. D. Martinez and most of their strong pitchers through trades. The player who ended up as the World Series Most Valuable Player, Steve Pearce, came to Boston in a trade in the middle of the season. The young player he was traded for, Santiago Espinal, is now an All-Star with the Blue Jays. Was the trade worth it? The 2018 World Series would not have been the same without him, even though he was nearing the end of his baseball career.

Readers who follow baseball will know at least some of the names of the players, but the book also discusses in detail the people in the Red Sox office along with officers of other teams. It is men like President of Baseball Operation Dave Dombrowski and his predecessor General Manager Ben Cherington who made many of the decisions. There are also the owners like John Henry and Larry Lucchino investing in money and a stable of scouts seeking talent. Sports is entertainment like the movies. We might know the names of the actors and a few directors and producers, but most of the names in the scrolling credits after a film are unfamiliar to the masses. Similarly, Speier reminds us of the important work the non-athletes do on a sports franchise.

The 2021 edition of Homegrown has an interesting afterword. It describes what happened to the Boston team after 2018. Just as after 2013, though perhaps for different reasons, the 2018 team was broken up beginning shortly after the season ended. The problem very simply was that those homegrown players were all coming to the end of their initial contracts, so they were looking for a lot more money. One could argue whether the Red Sox could have kept a few (especially Mookie and Xander) if they had just been willing to either offer more money or a longer contract. When I checked the Red Sox website the other day, I noted only three players who had played for them in 2018 still on the roster. Already the sports pundits are not expecting much from the Red Sox this year, but they said the same thing before the 2013 season, so you never know.

One book that can compare to Homegrown is Moneyball. Now the author of Moneyball was already famous for financial writings such as Liar’s Poker. Moneyball does have more emphasis on the bottom line while Homegrown has more emphasis on the player development and putting rosters together. At times it may seem like rolling the dice, but if the methodical practice of player development and balance between young players and mature-acting veterans works, you can have a champion.

I was curious if the author was related to the major league baseball Speiers: Chris, his son Justin, and his nephew Gabe. Judging from the author’s acknowledgments which include a significant number of relatives, it appears there is no relation.

The cover attracts attention, too. It is one of the iconic photographs of Andrew Benintendi’s ballet style catch in left field during the second game of the 2018 World Series. The scoreboard in the background with the final standings reminds us, too, of the dominant year the Red Sox had.

John Sandford. Ocean Prey. Putnam, 2021.

Back in the eighties when I worked in a Christian bookstore, John Sandford was a popular author. He mostly wrote books with his wife, Paula. Their Transformation of the Inner Man is still considered a classic on inner healing. We also sold books by John Sanford. This John Sandford is not either one. Indeed, most recent editions of the books of the first two Johns are listed as John L. Sandford and John A. Sanford to distinguish them. I am not sure why John Camp chose John Sandford as a pseudonym, but he did.

Now that I have that out of the way, let me share a bit about Ocean Prey. I had heard of Sandford, and I have a friend who likes his work, but this is the first piece I have read by this John Sandford. It is not so much a mystery or crime-solving novel as it is a story of two competing plots. The conflict of the clever plots turns into a million-dollar, life-or-death chess match.

On one side there are the drug importers working off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Even back in the seventies when I was in the Coast Guard, smugglers would sometimes toss their smuggled product overboard in offshore waters. Later, when they would go to get it, they would either pull it up if they set a phony lobster buoy over it, or the more sophisticated ones would send a radio signal that would set off a CO₂ cartridge and cause the product to float to the surface.

Apparently smugglers still do something similar. Of course, now with GPS there is no need for a buoy or a marker. If they are handling large amounts of heroin or cocaine in drums or pipes, they hire divers. So on one side we have a group of well-organized criminals with a fairly sophisticated communication plan trying to raise contraband heroin off the Atlantic shoreline of Florida.

When their behavior in a boat arouses suspicion, they are followed into port by a Coast Guard boat. Before they can be boarded, they shoot and kill the three crewmen of the Coast Guard boat. They get away with the drugs, set fire to their boat, and disappear. Little evidence exists other than what one shaken eyewitness saw.

After nearly five months, the FBI is no closer to finding the criminals. Because federal officers, the Coasties, are killed, the FBI are in charge of the case. Our main character, Federal Marshal Lucas Davenport enters with another marshal to see what they can find out. Although there is no “smoking gun” like the Steele Dossier, the FBI come across as showboats in this novel. The marshals do not worry about politics the way the FBI does.

Both sides know or at least expect that there are a lot more pipes of drugs out there. Both sides are waiting for the other side to stand down from their alert. They call them pipes because they are stored in sections of plastic pipe.

There are a few names floating “out there.” Davenport and his associate Bob Matees do some digging, and they get a little too close. Davenport calls on an old friend—apparently the protagonist of other Sandford novels—Virgil Flowers. Flowers is teamed up with a black female marshal and together they act asi if they are street smart stoners. Flowers is a qualified diver, and eventually he is hired to get the rest of the offshore drug cache.

He is quite successful the first time. Everyone seems happy. Flowers gets paid. The FBI and Marshals have a sense of what it going on, and the drugs are on their way to make dealers and importers lots of money.

Still, Lucas and the other law enforcement types want to do more than arrest some lackeys. They want the big guys. We begin to have an idea of who they may be, but they are good at putting several layers between them and the street level and sea level workers. Lucas comes up with a plan.

Both sides’ plans get thwarted to some degree. How it all works out is quite clever. The criminals are pretty ruthless, so there are a number of killings. A few victims are workers who they think squealed. But some are young women whose only offense was dating the wrong guys.

There are a lot of fascinating details about diving. How does one qualify? What about nitrogen narcosis? How deep can someone dive without getting the bends? How do people combat that? At the same time, there is some very sophisticated technology used by both sides. While not exactly Clancy, technodudes and dudesses might enjoy this plot anyhow.

Looking for a clever plot? Looking for justice? Take a look at Ocean Prey.

A couple of notes…

This paperback edition has an excellent afterword by the author. He gives some acknowledgments, but most of it is devoted to the problem with writing accurately, even in fiction. He gives an example of how he had someone read a manuscript of his to check for accuracy. A Minneapolis detective was carrying a Beretta pistol. The expert told him those agents only carry Glocks. So he changed the pistol type. The problem was that in another paragraph he had written that the man released the safety on the pistol. Glocks do not have safeties. Sandford knew that, but forgot to read around the whole passage about the pistol. Writers try, he admits, but they do not always get everything right, even when writing fiction and even when they know what is what. Since everyone uses language, a lot of people assume writing is as easy as talking. Writing well is hard and tricky work.

I note that as of this printing there are thirty-two books in this series by Sandford all with Prey as the last word in the title. All I could think of was that he could not have called this novel Ocean’s Prey, or readers would think it was about the cranberry business. I also thought that if he ever had a novel set in Quebec, he could call it Santander Beau Prey. Of course, it is unlikely that a U.S. Marshal would spend too much time in Canada.

Bruce Brummitt. Surviving in the Storm. Creation House, 2015.

Surviving in the Storm is mostly about experiences the author had in the eighties and nineties, but they speak to readers today. Readers familiar with either Brother Andrew’s God’s Smuggler (1967) or Chris Panos’ Gods’ Spy (1976), may get a sense of familiarity and encouragement. For most readers, I suspect that Surviving in the Storm may bring something new.

The author worked as a missionary out of Vienna not just to Austria but primarily to Communist countries in the 1980s. Christianity was largely prohibited or co-opted during this time. Most believers living under the atheistic states operated underground. Owning a Bible was either banned or severely restricted. Brummitt’s main ministry, then, was twofold: (1) To encourage persecuted believers and (2) to smuggle Bibles and Christian literature into countries where they were prohibited.

Naturally, the biggest challenge was getting the materials past the border guards of the various countries. While Brummitt tells of visits to at least three different Communist countries, it seems he spent more time in Romania, probably the poorest and most oppressive of all the Eastern European regimes. (Some might argue Albania was worse. I won’t quibble over that.)

The stories of how prayer was answered are both miraculous and encouraging. Brummitt clearly displayed great courage in doing what he did, but he also displayed great faith. It is clear that his “clients” in Eastern Europe appreciated both. His faith and courage let them know that they were not forgotten and that people in other countries cared about them and were praying for them and working on their behalf.

He often tells about how the Holy Spirit guided him to strangers who turned out to be helpful. In many cases they turned out to be Christians. He did what he could to blend in, but he also often prayed that he would not be noticed by the authorities.

He also tells of how they took advantage of situations they found themselves in. Once he was at an underground meeting that was actually in an old military bunker under the ground. The place was jammed. They asked him to share something but a late arrival had them alter the plans. The later arrival and his daughter were suspected of being informers. Bruce was only given five minutes. He felt that the Lord wanted him to share from two fairly obscure episodes in the Old Testament.

The late arrival ended up speaking for a long time and eventually departed. People then went forward for prayer and many people were healed. Bruce was also himself quite encouraged because people told him the two stories from the Bible that he summarized described accurately what the believers in that town were experiencing. One of the stories concerned the prophets during the time of Ahab and Jezebel who were persecuting followers of God in Israel at the time.

While public reading of biblical literature and singing hymns was prohibited, there was a loophole in the law. The People’s Republic of Romania allowed public demonstrations for funerals. When someone would die, people would have a long procession with a horse-drawn hearse through the whole town, singing songs and preaching from the Bible the whole way. People often joined the procession to find out more. It was a safe moment.

There are numerous other stories. While nearly half the book describes experiences the author had in Romania, he also illustrates the Lord’s working in Ukraine (back then part of the Soviet Union), Hungary, and Austria. Austria has religious freedom but also has refugee camps. It still does, though in recent years the camps have been mostly made up of people from the Near East instead of Eastern Europe (though events in the past year have seen Ukrainian refugees coming there).

Two things are different from the books by Panos and Brother Andrew I mentioned earlier. First, Brummitt tries to apply what he learned while ministering behind the Iron Curtain to the lives of Christians living in the free world. Second, the book originally came out in 2015. Those earlier books were written while the Iron Curtain was still in existence. They assumed the reader would have an idea of what the Communist governments were like and what life was like in those countries.

One recurring theme in Surviving in the Storm is economic rather than spiritual. Life under Communism for most of the people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was one of poverty. Construction, communication, and transportation were all marginal. People often lived close to starvation because of the lack of food. Governments are established to provide justice. They are marginal at best when it comes to production and distribution of things people want or need.

As most people know, the emphasis on industrial control by the government resulted in ecological disasters, even apart from Chernobyl. There was little to look forward to and little hope in the lives of most of the people. Not only did the Gospel message bring hope, but readers are reminded that life under Communism is no workers’ paradise.

The second edition, which we are reviewing, includes some concerns that certain things happening in the United States reflect a growing socialism and even absolutism on the part of the American government. The problem is that government control of the economy and of the culture removes incentives. It takes away hope and the idea that the future could be better. The only way Communism survives is from a combination of propaganda and stealing from the creative people in the free world.

Marx wrote that religion was an opiate, giving people a false hope. Not only do Brummitt’s supernatural experiences show that the Christian God is real—in other words, it is not a false hope—but his more mundane experiences show that Communism takes away any hope at all. Even ancient pagan philosophers realized the necessity of hope. The Gospel of Jesus can bring hope where others are trying to take all hope away. Praise God.