Sunday, February 5, 2012

Book Review: The Devil in Pew Number Seven

The Devil in Pew Number SevenThe Devil in Pew Number Seven by Rebecca Nichols Alonzo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If you don't like the preacher at your church, you would switch churches, right?  Well, that's not what happened in the case of Mr. Watts.  Every Sunday he sat in pew number seven, loudly making noises and disrupting services.  When his threats to the Nichols family went ignored, he stepped up his game to get them to leave.  He had made phone calls and written letters saying they would leave, dead or alive.  When that didn't work, he started setting off bombs of dynamite around the parsonage.  There were gunshots, and the author's little brother even was lying in a crib of shattered glass after one attack.  Thankfully no one was hurt through these attacks, at least physically.  It took a toll on the entire family mentally.

As if living in a war zone of bombs going off wasn't enough, one fateful day a man entered their house with a gun, shot her parents and she had to run to a neighbor's house for help.  Her mother was dead.  Her father never recovered mentally. I expected the murder of her mother to be connected to Mr. Watts since so much of the book focused on him, but he was not the one who killed her mother. 

This is an amazing book, and the author even tells about her appearance on the Dr. Phil show to see her mother's murderer.  I felt compassion for the author when she said that flying to the Dr. Phil show, she and her husband requested flights on different planes.  That way if one crashed, the other parent would still be alive and their children would not be orphans.  As she states in the book, this is a story she lives daily, and for the rest of us, we can set the book on the shelf and that be the end of it for us.

She talks about forgiveness and how if forgiveness is not granted, the bitter person is the one held in a prison of their own making. 

Had I not been sick while reading it, I wouldn't have put it down and would have read it straight through.  Few books have captured my attention like this one, and I would recommend it to anyone.

FTC disclaimer:  I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.  The opinions are my own.


1 comment:

  1. This was definitely a hard book to read emotionally, but her story is so powerful! Great review!

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