Title:The Law of Moses
Series: Not named
Author: Amy Harmon
Release Date: November 27, 2014
Rating:5 stars
Cliffhanger: no
If I tell you right up front, right in the beginning that I lost him, it will be easier for you to bear. You will know it’s coming, and it will hurt. But you’ll be able to prepare.
Someone found him in a laundry basket at the Quick Wash, wrapped in a towel, a few hours old and close to death. They called him Baby Moses when they shared his story on the ten o’clock news – the little baby left in a basket at a dingy Laundromat, born to a crack addict and expected to have all sorts of problems. I imagined the crack baby, Moses, having a giant crack that ran down his body, like he’d been broken at birth. I knew that wasn’t what the term meant, but the image stuck in my mind. Maybe the fact that he was broken drew me to him from the start.
It all happened before I was born, and by the time I met Moses and my mom told me all about him, the story was old news and nobody wanted anything to do with him. People love babies, even sick babies. Even crack babies. But babies grow up to be kids, and kids grow up to be teenagers. Nobody wants a messed up teenager.
And Moses was messed up. Moses was a law unto himself. But he was also strange and exotic and beautiful. To be with him would change my life in ways I could never have imagined. Maybe I should have stayed away. Maybe I should have listened. My mother warned me. Even Moses warned me. But I didn’t stay away.
And so begins a story of pain and promise, of heartache and healing, of life and death. A story of before and after, of new beginnings and never-endings. But most of all...a love story.
Someone found him in a laundry basket at the Quick Wash, wrapped in a towel, a few hours old and close to death. They called him Baby Moses when they shared his story on the ten o’clock news – the little baby left in a basket at a dingy Laundromat, born to a crack addict and expected to have all sorts of problems. I imagined the crack baby, Moses, having a giant crack that ran down his body, like he’d been broken at birth. I knew that wasn’t what the term meant, but the image stuck in my mind. Maybe the fact that he was broken drew me to him from the start.
It all happened before I was born, and by the time I met Moses and my mom told me all about him, the story was old news and nobody wanted anything to do with him. People love babies, even sick babies. Even crack babies. But babies grow up to be kids, and kids grow up to be teenagers. Nobody wants a messed up teenager.
And Moses was messed up. Moses was a law unto himself. But he was also strange and exotic and beautiful. To be with him would change my life in ways I could never have imagined. Maybe I should have stayed away. Maybe I should have listened. My mother warned me. Even Moses warned me. But I didn’t stay away.
And so begins a story of pain and promise, of heartache and healing, of life and death. A story of before and after, of new beginnings and never-endings. But most of all...a love story.
A story of before and after, of new beginnings and never-endings. A story flawed and fractured, crazy and cracked, and most of all, a love story.
I'm not going too much into the plot because if you read this, you need to experience it without any expectations.
This book deconstructed me. It wrecked me. I flipped the last page and I was a puddle of goo without brain function for about an hour. I just sat there. Staring and thinking, thinking, thinking.
If you think I might be exaggerating, I'm not.
If you think I'm being dramatic, I'm not.
I genuinely, in all honesty had tears rolling down my cheeks. My throat tightened up, and my heart broke and mended again right along with these characters. Of course, every reader's personal reaction to a book is subjective so not everyone is going to feel that way. But if there was a chance that you could experience a book that will change you like it did me, why wouldn't you try?
I know one of the big complaints about this book was that others didn't feel the romantic connection at all between the hero and heroine because of how Moses refused to accept Georgia's love for so much of the book. To me, it couldn't have been any other way.
I'd never needed anyone. Not really. And I'd never said those words to anyone. "I need you" felt like "I love you," and it scared me. It felt like breaking one of my laws.
See, my personal reaction to that is that the book is about more than just your average, trite love story. You don't jump from point A to point B in real life skipping through a field of sunflowers towards a rainbow. Life is gritty and hard and can bruise you along the way. This book illustrates finding that sunflower growing through a dirty, cracked sidewalk. It's about a man who overcomes the kind of adversity that would kill a weaker man. Moses discovers the meaning of love, not just the one he was meant to love. And the way he is taught is complex, and heartbreaking, and it mesmerized me in all of it's glory. There's no other word but stunning for how it reached inside of me and spoke to me. And the echo of it continues to speak to me so much, I can't seem to remove them from the forefront of my thoughts.
I wasn't expecting to have such a visceral reaction when every piece of their story was made whole. Sadness, fear, anger, hurt, hope, fear, trust, FORGIVENESS, then LOVE. Yes, fear bears repeating. Because they're fractured and human and they have to fight their natural inclinations to protect themselves from pain. In the end, how it all clicked into place so smoothly was one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. I FELT them. Like they weren't just words strung together out of a woman's imagination. Georgia and Moses were living, breathing people with the kind of love that's destructive when it's not understood. But in the end, that love radiated peace and happiness and made me feel so lucky I was able to ride along and watch it grow. Teach. Heal.
To say that I am impressed is so inadequate. I wish I could express myself as eloquently as Amy Harmon does because anything less feels like an injustice to how exquisite this story was.
So, obviously, yeah. I liked it. Or loved it-enormously.
This book was everything.
View all my reviews
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