Daisies are Forever

Right now in Lebanon there are around 6,000 Syrian refugees living in run-down tents with limited access to food and medicine, facing difficulties that can be hard for us as Americans to imagine. But what if we could get a glimpse into their lives? A life of fleeing and struggling to obtain the most basic necessities that so many of us take for granted.  A life full of disease, death, and absolute deprivation.

Well, we have been provided such an opportunity in Liz Tolsoma’s book Daisies are Forever, which details the plight of Prussian refugees as they flee the brutal invading Russian army who levels whole cities and mauls down people with their fighter jets.  

The book follows Gisela a Prussian-American woman as she flees with her nieces, neighbors, and an American POW as they try to reach Berlin, a place they hope to find deliverance. During the struggle, they face starvation, constant brutal deaths, and decisions that make them choose between right and wrong and survival.

At one point, the characters in the book remind me of the characters in Farewell to Arms. In Hemingway’s classic we are introduced to characters who face so much brutality and hardship they stop feeling and become mindless robots just trying to survive.

We see this fully displayed in Gisela. At the beginning of the book, she faces intense emotional pain each time she witnesses a loss of life, but towards the middle of the book, she becomes someone who will easily take a much-needed coat off a recently mauled-down refugee with barely any emotion.

Makes one wonder how many Syrians have lost all sense of emotions as they just try to survive.

I believe this is a must read for everyone. Why? It will remind us that there are real people behind the news images we have become so accustomed to seeing on T.V. as another country erupts into war. And it will remind us to keep those people in our daily prayers.

So tonight when you lay your head on your pillow, take a second to ask God to hold all refugees in his hands.

To learn more about author Liz Tolsma please visit her website at:

http://www.liztolsma.com/

Josette Downey  is the christian romance author of A Time to Say Goodbye and Bonds of Tradition. She has master’s degree in English From East Carolina University, and currently works for a premier test scoring company. She is the mother of a precocious six-year-old girl, who enjoys bugs, snakes and superman.  She enjoys southern cooking, reading and exploring emerging technology, but is best defined by her devotion to her faith and the empowerment of women in the modern world.

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