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Shona Jayne Martin grew up on a dairy farm in New Zealand. Childhood games in the hay shed, under the fronds of the great pine forrest, and along the banks of the farm river both spurred and nurtured her imagination for creating stories. The family of six attended the local village church, and the children went to school everyday on the rickety old school bus.
In the 1980s charismatic revival swept through New Zealand and Youth For Christ ministries impacted the teenager's life. Shona joined a team of young people to visit the Philippines in late 1988. In February of 1990, she married one of her fellow teammates, Bob Barnard.
Bob and Shona went to Bible college in Tasmania, Australia in the following years to prepare for missionary service. In August of 1995, Bob and Shona were sent out from New Zealand with their two-year-old daughter, to work amongst Mexico’s underprivileged children.
Today Bob and Shona are pastors of a growing church in the heart of Mexico City’s Iztapalapa. Shona homeschooled their two children for many years and now teaches English literature, grammar and reading at a local school for missionary kids.
Shona has used her creative writing skills in producing dynamic children’s clubs, outreach programmes and weekly study materials. Shira: The Name History Forgot is Shona’s first work of fiction.
Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite
Shira's gift is melody - music. She has many other gifts and each one of these gifts serves her well for she is one of the chosen, one of the true believers who will journey far and endure great hardships to find her true path. Little is known about the wives of Noah and his three sons, Japheth, Shem and Ham. They must have been very strong women to follow Noah's firm belief in his mission to board an ark to avoid the annihilation of the human race and all living creatures on Earth. They must have had their own very strong faith to carry them through, to help them endure being outcasts in their own communities (before the flood), isolated on a floating vessel (while the waters covered the earth) and alone in a new world void of life (after the flood). Shem, with his wife (or wives), became the father of Israel. Shira: The Name History Forgot is an interesting take on the story of a woman who possibly became the wife of Shem before the Great Flood.
Author Shona Jayne Barnard has written a story of a very believable character in antediluvian Biblical history. She poignantly describes the overpowering forces of evil that all but consumed the human race. And she lovingly describes the chosen few who shone as angels in their devotion to the Great Creator. Good versus evil - the classic tale. Shira, the focus of this story, is surprisingly good through all of her trials and temptations, her struggles for survival when all else seems to weigh against her. Shira never loses her faith. This is a very powerful story about one of the women of Biblical times, a woman whose story has been forgotten, sadly. But Shira didn't forget her promise. She managed to keep the sacred documents safe, the documents that would be passed onto the Tribe of Israel, and tell her descendants and her descendants' descendants the story of how it all began.
