Burden of Faith Dean Magdal Thompson Fiction - Drama Reviewed for ReadersFavorite.com
Maria is a broken woman. She was raped, her beloved was murdered. The assault left her pregnant. Unable to bear the thought of having the child she escapes to Mexico and has an abortion. She was left unable to bear a child. She feels God has rejected her. The deeply religious woman seeks redemption though assisting Kat Reed. Kat is violently raped by a man in her office. Kat is pregnant and the father Tio will stop at nothing to hide his secret. Maria and Kat form a strong friendship and fight to protect Kat’s baby from Tio. Dean Magdal Thompson begins his book Burden of Faith in a shocking dramatic way. Brutal violence makes this book difficult to read. Thompson does not sugar coat his underlying message of The Right To Life. He describes an abortion in frank terms. This is not a book for the faint of heart. The amount of violence was overwhelming.

 

Gary dale Cearley	4.0 / 5
Dean Magdal Thompson's book Burden of Faith takes a very hard look at the hardships in life revolving around sexual violence and the question of abortion. The author leaves you pretty much no doubt about where he falls on this controversial issue as well. Burden of Faith is well written. Personally when I am reading fiction, unless it is historical fiction, I don't like to see chapter headers with quotes about the issues. It can give a good story the feeling of out and out propaganda which I sometimes felt when starting a chapter since Dean Thompson interspersed actual quotes that are generally anti-abortion throughout the book. This is not to say that I agree or disagree with the position of the author but it is to say that I would have pushed the point a bit more subtly and let the reader draw his or her own conclusion. Nevertheless, the story was compelling, albeit violent in some places. We are shown how two young women of extremely differing backgrounds, one Mexican American from South Texas, Maria, and, Kat, an Oklahoma gal with a waspy background, meet at low points in their lives and help one another through. They help one another get through the nightmares of Maria's violent rape and mutilation and her finding she was pregnant with the child of her rapist who also murdered the love of her life. This sad turn of events subsequently led to Maria fleeing to Mexico and giving herself an abortion and ultimately leaving her home. But the tragedy was not all Maria's. Before Kat and Maria fatefully met and became friends Kat herself was the victim of a sexual assault. She also was not pleased to find that she had an unwanted pregnancy from her assailant, a man not only known to her, but who worked in the same office with her. A man who harbors not only ill intentions toward Kat and any other of his victims, but also keeps a deadly secret - a secret that destroys lives. Much of the story is about the redemption that comes from Kat's struggle with deciding to keep her baby and the troubles caused by the reckless life of the baby's father, Tio. Dean Magdal Thompson makes no bones about what he thinks doing the right thing is. He doesn't leave much room for the reader there. But he is extremely fair in showing the true complexity of the decisions and for that I can recommend this book.