If you are a long time reader, you know that I enjoy reading. I recently joined
where I can read a book and then review it on my blog and or their website.

I have to admit that when browsing the books I had a little bit of difficulty finding one that caught my attention (yes, I judge books by their covers). I also took note that a lot of the books revolved around “God”.

I have stated before, I am not a religious person, but am a spiritual person in my own right so I tread lightly when it comes to “religious” type books. I’m not sure what it was, but Cruel Harvest by Fran Grubb really caught my attention.

From Book Sneeze:

“Get out here, now, or I’m gonna kill you!” he hollered.

Little girls are hardwired to hold their daddies in high esteem, so it comes as a shock the first time a daughter feels the back of her daddy’s hand across her face . . . or watches him punch and kick her mother to within an inch of her life.

How could this be? Her older sisters teach her how to survive, even when he comes for her in the night.

A girl learns to become invisible, to look the other way, to say nothing when a curious stranger asks if she’s okay. To lie. To expect nothing, not even from relatives.

To cry without tears.

To pray silently.

When she is fourteen, and weary, a girl begins to wish she were dead. Cruel Harvest is the compelling story of how she lived instead.

I feel like I shouldn’t say this is a “good book” considering what it is about, but I will say, I couldn’t put it down (I finished the book in less than 20 hours). It would, however, be appropriate to say it was very well written.

Cruel Harvest follows the author through her childhood that is filled with verbal, mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse. It also touches on her Faith and how things were purposely placed in her way – something I strongly believe. Sometimes, your Higher Power does place you or certain people in a certain situation for a purpose and this book just solidified that concept to me.

My praise to the author for what she experience in life; the things she has overcome; the power of her words in the book; and her ability to share with others.

It is easy for me to sit here as an outsider in another time to say I would never allow such a thing to happen, but being a child in a different time, one can only imagine surviving the cruelty that she endured.

Cruel Harvest is not for the faint of heart, but she puts real life right in front of you and shares her strength and Faith and how she overcame abuse by the hand of her father.