100 books like God's Smuggler

Set in Holland during WWII, this autobiography gives an up close and personal look at life in a German concentration camp.

The vivid descriptions of the horrid living conditions and prevailing illnesses made me feel like I was there. Most memorable was the discussion of the flea-infested straw bedding and the notion of being thankful for the fleas. The author and her sister were devout Christians, but why be thankful for fleas? However, the guards left the women alone because of the fleas.

I will also always remember how the author was given a small bottle of liquid vitamin D and how she never hesitated to share it with the sick, yet it never ran dry. She makes it clear this was God’s work. 

While the book Unbroken is fantastic and also about the Louis Zamperini story, to me, Devil At My Heels is even better.  This book tells the amazing true story of Louis, it also talks a lot about where he was spiritually growing up and includes his conversion to Christ story. I adore this story on so many levels. Louis Zamperini was defiantly an unlikely candidate to become a spiritual giant, but God knew what he had placed inside of him. He went from juvenile delinquent to Olympian, to being a soldier, to being shot down in the Pacific Ocean, to being a POW, to being a drunk womanizer whose marriage was falling apart. Few people understand that it was because God used his conversion that brought Reverend Billy Graham into the public spotlight. His story again reminded me that a life well lived for the gospel carries a legacy.

This is an amazing story of a life well lived for the gospel. It is amazing how God can take the ones that people would have never thought possible to do the impossible for his kingdom. This story is so amazing that could have only happened by the hand of God and it keeps you passionately engaged thinking about how God uses his children.

This is one of my favorite books as a young child and has continued to be one of my favorite books. Based on a true story, it is about the capture of a young girl on the brink of love and womanhood. Her fight, spunk, and ability to sew are truly what help her and her family escape. I have always loved this book. I love it for its humanity and truth. I love it for its ability to take the reader and see that even in the worst circumstances, one can still find themselves and learn how to overcome.  

In the fall of 1879, when John Muir arrived among Alaska’s Chilkat Tlingits, he charmed them with his stories but also unwittingly acted as an agent of Manifest Destiny and opened the floodgates of the Klondike Gold Rush. This is an important story of first contact and fresh perspectives, thoroughly researched and compellingly told. There’s no other book like it.

The story of a brilliant, driven young scholar who seeks both to rebel against and to please his demanding father, of a leading intellectual skeptic who becomes a Christian, and of a missionary who faces unimaginable adventure, hardship, and triumph in the mysterious country of Burma (modern Myanmar) is an unforgettable tale of tragedy, loss, heartbreak, faith, and victory, complete with the interwoven stories of the three very different but equally extraordinary women who would share Adoniram Judson’s life.

Meeting four such remarkable people in the pages of one book is an extraordinary experience, and seeing God at work through some of the darkest events of history to seek out a people for Himself will give you hope for the darkest days. 

At first, I was scared by the thickness of the book. More than 600 pages? I didn’t think I would have the patience and time to finish it. My book club chose the book as a reading challenge for everyone. A challenge indeed. But a colorful one.

I remember carrying the book with me everywhere I went. As I finally reached the last page of this riveting family saga set in Africa, I felt older and wiser. Wow, I actually finished the thick novel. It was a great achievement.

I was never bored or tired. I did not want the story to end. It could have been 6000 pages and I still would have thrown myself into this epic story.

This book tells the story of a religious man selected to meet the most alien of aliens far across the galaxy, leaving the woman he loves in the process. But their physical distance is the least of their concerns as he finds himself starting to question his most core beliefs as a missionary, and becoming ever more alienated from his own people even as he struggles to communicate his new, alien-inspired insights. Faber wrote this book as his own wife was dying, and I have to think that feeling of urgency and loss was interwoven into this amazing story. As a result, this book is one that touched me so deeply that I’m not sure I could read it a second time though.

I know I said in my introduction that there are too many books from the missionary perspective and not enough from a Chinese point of view, but I’m going to make an exception here with the only novel, too, in the group. In this 1985 title, the extraordinary John Hersey captures the urge of American missionaries to proselytize in China, as well as their complicated relationship with Chinese Christians. This sweeping fictional biography of David Treadup, whose character is a composite of the lives of actual missionaries, including Hersey’s father, carries the reader from New York state in the early 1900s to the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s.  

Laura’s fiancé and father die, and she travels from San Francisco to Hawaii to live with missionary relatives. It’s 1886, and Honolulu is the sophisticated bustling capital of a prosperous modern kingdom. Laura’s missionary relatives actively work to bring down the monarchy while Laura goes to work for the royal family. She builds quite a bond with the last queen, Lili`uokalani, who is trying to save her kingdom. This book tells the compelling story of the Hawaiian kingdom’s last days from a point of view inside the royal family.