Lynn Austin's "Where We Belong"

Rebecca and Flora Hawes, brought up by a somewhat eccentric father, both long to find their place in life, even when the roles for Victorian women are extremely limited. In spite of the dictates of society, the girls have a love of travel, history, and adventure that sends them to Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land. Thirty years after their first foreign adventure, they find themselves, their starchy young butler Soren Petersen, and their fiery maid Kate in a desert sandstorm, dependent on a sheikh with possible alternate motives for helping them. As their journey becomes more uncertain, they each sift through their memories that led them to this desert.

I definitely wouldn't call it a fast-paced novel; the vast majority of the story is told in flashbacks (thankfully all done chronologically, except for when it jumps back to the present), so it reads more like a memoir, with Rebecca being the main focus, but Flora and, to a lesser extant, Soren and Kate having their share of memories. There's no real sense of urgency to the plot, and as such I had no problem putting the book down to go do other things.

The history behind the story was fascinating--two adventurous women really did go off on their own to travel the Holy Land and discovered a palimpsest of the bible, written hundreds of years before. Knowing that it was loosely based off history made the story more interesting. I've always taken it for granted that the bible is proven true and unchanged since forever, but this book reminded me that there was a time--not so very long ago--in which ancient scrolls and codices that prove the authenticity of the bible had not yet been discovered by the modern world.

The story is littered with spiritual references, and it's good to see the sisters relying on God, whatever the adventure they find themselves in. Each of the four characters is searching for the place where they belong, though the place may not be where modern society deems it should. I wish there had been a little more spark to the story, but it wasn't bad by any means. Just long and rather slow.

Thank you Bethany house and NetGalley for a free e-book. I was not required to write a positive review, and all opinions are my own.