Grace Bridges: Faith Awakened
Faith Awakened
By Grace Bridges
ISBN: 978-1-4303-1111-9
Genre: Spiritual Sci-Fi
“Then it began. It was sudden and violent. One day, the City lay waiting; the next, the people lay groaning in every direction as the fresh sea breezes brought destruction to our shores. There was no cure…”
A book of two interwoven halves, Faith Awakened combines the fictional journal and the first-person experience of a woman who loses the will to live, yet finds herself embroiled in a battle to save the human race from certain death. The tale is haunted by judgement-and-redemption themes of Biblical proportions, catapulted into a devastated future world racked by the human lust for power. From the first pages, undercurrents of desperation drive the story as heroine Mariah plunges her few surviving friends and her beloved Peter into a cryogenic stasis. Two alternate realities unfold and gather momentum, reaching for each other with irresistible rhythm.
In terms of audience, the idea of faith in God is approached with the assumption that the readership will already have their own understanding of it, not as if to explain it or to convert non-Christians. The book includes second blessings of the Holy Spirit, visions and prophecies, female preachers and a miraculous cure. There is some mention of adult intimate relationships, including a question from a non-believer about the virtual world’s functionality. These are treated with discretion and brevity, and purity of pre-marital relationships is expressed in Mariah and Peter.
Initially, Bridges eloquently captures the stream of consciousness which undergirds the unfolding story. As Mariah’s journey continues, some aspects of the writing style may leave the reader wishing for more immediacy and more detail. If the book lacks anything, it’s a deeper dive into the world it presents. However, the plot soon begins to clarify the reasons behind the author’s structural choices. The unorthodoxy of Bridges’s narrative quickly becomes addictive. The conclusion to Mariah’s struggle through emptiness of world and soul compensates for any perceived lack of depth in the earlier parts of the book.
Throughout, the underlying themes of abiding regret and reawakened hope demand thought and introspection, drawing the reader into a contemplative interaction with the author. Bridges gives generously of herself, sharing her heart and her life experience with her readers. On par with Bill Myers’s Eli and Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy, but with a better premise than both, the setting strips away common conceptions of what it is to live. Bridges examines the deeper realities of the heart and soul through a bleak, richly textured storyworld that offers a fresh approach to the question, “What is reality?”
The compelling jacket design of Faith Awakened is an accurate signpost of the vivid, unusual journey within. If you’re a fan of strong leading characters, tense plotting with a few good twists, and long, deep chords of redemptive renewal, Faith Awakened is an invigorating step off the beaten path.
