As all of our readers know, we don’t normally review fiction. The reason for this is that fiction can be very subjective and we often feel like we might provide spoilers.
The book Annie Russo: Tenacity Born by J L Baumann is a work of fiction and could possibly be called historical fiction since it is based around the time of the war in Vietnam.
This book is not like most of the “mind candy” fiction books that are out these days. We live in a world of TLDR. Many young readers today will pick up a short book and say, “Too long, didn’t read.” Well, this book is long and it isn’t mind candy. We feel that it is very much written in the style of Tolstoy.
The author uses many descriptive words to paint a word picture of events. It simply would not be the same if left to a word limit like so many of today’s authors use.
This is a book that is written in such a way as to paint a very vivid word picture that causes the reader to see, feel, and hear everything that the characters in the book do.
Baumann paints such a vivid mental picture of the scene in a fine dining establishment that has me still tasting the shrimp cocktail. Very few works today do that. I wish I had the money to buy shrimp cocktails for me and Suzanne. The author made me hungry throughout the fine dining scene.
We do need to disclose that there are at least two incidents in the book where the characters use the Lord’s Name in vain. Readers of our blogs expect us to tell them this and we would be shirking our duties if we did not tell them this.
This author is a craftsman that displays his craft on every page of the book. If one can get through this book without going through every emotion that there is, they weren’t paying attention.
There is a very funny story in this book regarding a meeting with a nun and one of the professors working under her that is worth the total cost of the book just by itself.
We give Annie Russo all five stars and think any person who is a true bibliophile will love this book. Yes, it is longer than most modern books. Just like a Mozart composition, it simply would not be the same if you cut any of it. This will make a great Christmas present to any reader on your Christmas gift list. +
We were sent a complimentary copy of this book. We are under no obligation to write any review, positive or negative.
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Very often we will be sitting in a church and the pastor will ask if anyone would like to share a word or two of testimony. The problem I have with doing that is limiting it to a word or two.
God has done so many wonderful things in my life that it would be impossible to tell it all yet impossible to stop telling it once I got started as well.
I never had a knee crawling to the altar experience. I am jealous of those who did. But I do know the Lord and I do have a story to tell. When I was about nine years old my sister decided to give her heart to Jesus. At that time I didn't know exactly what that meant.
But I could answer yes when the pastor of New Pisgah Baptist Church in Inman South Carolina (Now First Baptist Church of North Spartanburg) asked me did I believe that Jesus was the Son of God. And yes to did I believe that Jesus died on the cross to save me of my sins. I was baptized shortly after that. I was raised in Sunday School and going to church most Sundays so I never really questioned anything about God.
In the summer of 1976 I went to Myrtle Beach South Carolina with the youth group from First Baptist Church of Iva. While on that trip diabetes decided to make itself known to me. I was 300 miles away from home and very sick. I really didn't know I was that sick until the last night we were there. I was in such pain I couldn't sleep so I sat out on the front porch of the beach house we were staying in and asked God to let me die. I knew I would be in heaven and I knew that Jesus was there for me.
Thanksgiving of 1997 looked like it was going to be pretty sparse.. I sat at my desk balancing the checkbook and trying to rob Peter to pay Paul but Peter had hired a bodyguard and just wasn't budging. The money just wasn't there to have a Thanksgiving dinner. We would have had sandwiches or something like that to eat but no real Thanksgiving dinner.
I breathed a quick prayer "God Please". Only a few seconds later came a knock on the door. Ken, a man from a church we sometimes visit, was there. His daughter had to leave town unexpectedly and had some perishables she wanted him to throw away for her. He decided that he should give them to someone and he thought of us. Ken brought lots of things. When he left I said a thank you prayer but God wasn't through yet.
Shortly after that the telephone rang. It was Charlotte “Granny” Madden. She said, "Bird" which was my nickname to all my friends when I was growing up, "They gave away turkeys at the place where Doyle, her son, works today and there was one left over and I thought of you." I thought, "Wow, God had this all taken care of." But God wasn't through yet.
About an hour later, we had just gotten all the things Ken had brought put up in the cabinets when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Harris. Mrs. Harris is the mother of one of my very best friends and like an adopted grandmother to the kids. From time to time she will call up and say "Bird, I got something for the kids, can I bring it over?" Usually it is Ice cream or freeze pops. On this day she said she had some things to bring over for the kids. I thought well God has taken care of dessert too.
Well not only did she bring dessert, this lady had bought a whole ham, a large turkey, fixings for any type of casserole you could ever imagine, things to make pies and cakes and banana pudding, as well as hot dogs for later and more. When she left there were boxes and boxes of food all over our kitchen and living room. We said a prayer of thanks to God and told him we couldn't store any more food.
Jesus walked everywhere he went. However, God realizes that this isn't practical in today's world and has constantly performed miracles to show us He is here for us. Like:
We had a station wagon. It was on its last legs but somehow it managed to get us where we needed to go. One day the poor thing had gone as far as it could go. It broke down in front of a used car lot. The man at the business next door observed my wife, Suzanne, and the kids get out and start walking down the road to find a telephone. He offered to let her use his telephone.
In the course of events he offered to tow the car off the street for her since he has a tow truck. My wife says she isn't sure about that but he says he can do that and he and I can work out the details later. When she tells me about this, a red flag go up. When someone won't give you a price like that it usually means you can't afford it.
Well, the next day he calls first thing to tell me what WAS wrong with the car is that it needed a fuel pump and to have the carburetor adjusted. I cringed since he has already fixed it. I ask him what the cost of the repair would be. He tells me he will call me back with the total. Soon he called back and said that every time he went to figure the bill the Holy Spirit told him not to charge me anything. He said he tried to figure and he kept hearing the clear message not to charge anything.
So he says that he can have his employee run the car home if my wife can bring him back. On the way back he tells my wife that the place will be closed when he gets back and could she just run him on home. He then said he noticed that she didn't have much gas and offers to put gas in the car. He puts ten dollars’ worth of gas in the car. Not only does God provide a repair but almost a tank of gas too.
Finally that station wagon can no longer be fixed. We had been taking our children to AWANAS at Temple Baptist Church. I wrote a letter to the church asking them if they could provide a ride to the awards night ceremony since the kids had worked so hard to earn the awards. They provided rides for us.
The assistant pastor showed up a few days later with a man named Ronnie Wright. He said Ronnie thinks he should take a look at the car and see what he can do. They tow the car off. Ronnie says that it can’t be fixed. The motor is blown and the car just isn’t worth putting a motor in. Well we prayed about a car but had no money to do anything
.
Meanwhile back at the church. A man, George, went to trade his van for a new one. The dealer told him what he would allow him in trade for the old van. George said he would give the van away before he would take that for it. He made the deal for the new car without a trade. On the way home he heard a voice that said “Did you mean that George?” George said, “Yes God if you show me someone who really needs this van I will give it to them.” George, who was in charge of game time at AWANAS pulled into the church to get things set up and began talking to the assistant pastor. The assistant pastor told George about us needing a car. George and his family gave us the van.
A few years later we are driving that van to Jubilee. This is a special revival service. Well the transmission fell completely out of the van. Just behind us is the preacher’s son. He pulls over, and gets us to church.
Well, Pastor Joey at another church we had visited (The same church Ken with the food went to, Lakeside Wesleyan Church hears our story. He finds a used transmission and his church pays for it. He drives to Roebuck South Carolina to pick it up. He brings it back and it doesn’t work. He takes it back and gets another one. Ronnie Wright installs the transmission both times and only charges $100 which is the cost of a seal and what he has to pay a man to help him.
Well Ronnie says that the transmission will get us going for a while but not to plan to have that van too much longer. We begin to pray. I get an E-mail from a lady in North Carolina named Sherri Griffin. She and her husband Shawn have to move with their seven children from North Carolina to Washington State. She says they have several things they would like to give us. One of them is a van. That van is the 1995 Ford Aerostar we are still driving today. We have to put water in the radiator every time we go out but it is still working. The air conditioner no longer works but it is still going. All we have to do is get to Charlotte to pick it up.
Later her husband Shawn calls and says he has a problem. I think that maybe for some reason they can’t give us the van. The problem is that he has two collector cars that will cost too much to move across the country and if I can find someone with a rollback wrecker that he can give us both of those. A 1972 Roadrunner Clone and a 1970 Satellite Station wagon. So, we need one van, pray for it and get one van and two cars. God is good.
Lest you think that the only reason that I believe in the power of God is because what He has provided for me let me tell you that Jesus is my Lord and Personal Savior. I know that Jesus died on the Cross to save me of my sins. Our God is an Awesome God.
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As all of our readers know, we don’t normally review fiction. The reason for this is that fiction can be very subjective and we often feel like we might provide spoilers. 
