The Only Best Place

July 24, 2006
The heroine of this charming novel, the first in a series, is Leslie VandeKeere, who unhappily follows her husband hundreds of miles to Montana. There, they will be helping out on his family farm for a year, after which the VandeKeeres plan to return to their glitzier urban life in Seattle. Shortly after their arrival in Montana, however, Leslie begins to notice certain changes in her husband: he starts going to church with his family and seems quite happy to be pulled back into the fold of his mother and sisters. Leslie doesn't fancy this transformation, and she doesn't like his designs to stay in Montana forever. The plot has few surprises and is in fact an old chestnut of faith fiction: cosmopolitan sophisticates find faith, family ties and purpose in a small town. But Aarsen's strong character development makes up for that, as readers will find themselves feeling sympathetic for, and seeing things from the viewpoint of, nearly every character. There are a few slips—Leslie wants nothing to do with the Christian subculture, yet she casually invokes Gary Chapman's "five love languages," a tidbit of evangelical-speak that a secular urbanite like Leslie wouldn't know. Nonetheless, this promising new series in Christian fiction is sure to find many fans.