Now, let’s get into the book! I plan to go through this book more quickly than some of the others I have reviewed. So, this book actually predates the Christian homeschooling movement I grew up in-or rather, it was written just as that movement was about to take off. Oke published Love Comes Softly, the first book in the series, in 1979. She became a very popular author in evangelical Christian circles, and is perhaps best known for her Love Comes Softly series. Ultimately, Oke’s husband became president of Mountain View Bible College.Īt some point along this journey, Janette Oke began writing, primarily novels. Her husband, a graduate of the same Bible college, was a pastor the couple, who soon had four children, were stationed in various churches in Indiana and Canada. She went to Mountain View Bible College, also in Alberta, and married in 1957. That said, abuse does come up in tangential storylines, and it could be handled better.īefore I get started, I want to offer some background on the author. Janette Oke was born in 1935 and grew up on a farm in Alberta, Canada. I was so nervous that I was almost physically relieved when I found that Clark was a genuinely nice person. And, thankfully, Love Comes Softly lacks the abusive themes so present in Francine Rivers’ A Voice in the Wind series.īecause I hadn’t remembered how abusive the characters in A Voice in the Wind were until I reread it, I reread Love Comes Softly with some trepidation. Quick note before I begin! This book is far better written than anything I’ve reviewed here before, thought it does have a few foibles (one of which we’ll get to in this chapter). It’s no surprise that this book was so popular in evangelical circles. The result is a bit of sexual tension, and that the two begin to notice each other gradually, in ways I found quite exciting as a teen with limited access to more overtly sexual reading material. The book is that it portrays a couple gradually falling in love while already living together as a married couple-in every way but one.

Love comes softly book set