Francine Rivers
Francine Rivers is an author.
A conversion in 1986 split this career cleanly in two. Rivers studied English and journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, and spent about a decade writing historical romance for the general market. After becoming a born again Christian she stopped, and when she started again the books had a different purpose.
Redeeming Love was the first of the new kind, written as a statement of faith: a retelling of the biblical story of Gomer and Hosea relocated to the California Gold Rush, published first by Bantam and later reissued by a Christian house. It became one of the steadiest sellers in the Christian bookselling trade and held a place on the bestseller lists for years. A film version reached cinemas in January 2022, and an earlier novel, The Last Sin Eater, had already been adapted in 2007.
What she does well is the thing inspirational fiction usually gets wrong. Rivers writes damage honestly. Her heroines carry histories that most Christian publishers of the period would have preferred to imply rather than describe, and the redemption only means anything because the harm is on the page. What she does less well is subtlety of argument: the theology is stated rather than dramatised, and readers who do not share it will feel the sermon arrive on schedule. That is a fair trade for her audience and an obstacle for everybody else, and it is worth knowing which one you are before you start.
Books (13)
Where to start with Francine Rivers
Nothing else she wrote does the job of Redeeming Love, so start there. The Gold Rush setting gives the religious framework somewhere hard to stand, and it is the harshest thing in her catalogue; readers expecting gentle inspirational romance are frequently caught out.
After that, the historical sequence: Voice in the Wind, An echo in the darkness and As Sure as the Dawn, which together make her most sustained piece of storytelling and the best showcase for her research.
For contemporary Rivers, The Atonement Child takes on the subject her readership argues about most and refuses to soften it, while Leota's Garden is the quietest and, for a lot of readers, the most moving. Her mother's hope and Her daughter's dream are one long family story split across two volumes; take them together or not at all.