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Francine Rivers is one of the New York Times Bestselling authors from America who has written several successful novel series’ based on the Romance, Historical and Christian Fiction genres. She was born in the year 1947 in the United States and used to write her novels on the historical romance theme in the beginning. It was in the year 1986 that she started writing Christian fiction novels. Francine is best known for writing the inspirational novel Redeeming Love. One of the other novels written by her, The Lat Sin Eater has been adapted into a feature film. Francine was born to a police officer father, while her mother was a nurse. She had the dream of becoming a published author right from her childhood days. Keeping that in mind, she got herself admitted in the University of Nevada in Reno and graduated from there with a Bachelor of Arts degree in the subjects of Journalism and English. After completing her graduation, Francine began working as a newspaper reporter. She used to write obituaries and several stories relate to the interest of humans. She did not attempt anything big in relation to her dream of becoming a novelist till her marriage. It was due to her mother-in-law because of whom Francine developed the interest in romance novels. She lent some of her romance novels to Francine and she was so impressed by the stories that she decided to try and write a novel herself in that genre. As a result, she wrote and sold her first manuscript in the year 1976 and kept writing historical romance novels for the years to come. When Francine decided to write novels on the Christian fiction theme in the year 1986, she found it difficult to develop the plots for her new novels in the first three years. Francine thought of spending her time in reading the Bible instead and began to develop several plots. For the next few years Francine Rivers maintained her focus on writing Christian novels and when the first novel of the new genre was published in the year 1991 titled ‘Redeeming Love’, she considered it to be a statement of her faith. The novel depicts the life story of a prostitute named Angel, who gets reformed and converted to Christianity eventually with the help of love and stoic patience of Michael Hosea, who was a frontier farmer.
After the success of her first novel, Francine continued to write novels based on the inspirational fiction genre. She says that she wanted to illustrate the preaching of the Christ for dealing with difficult problems of life and write realistic novels based on them. Francine did not want to re-release the her earlier romance novels and hence she had bought the publication rights so that she can prevent them from getting released again. However, some of her earlier novels were already re-released and circulated in the bookstores. One of the inspirational novel series’ written by Francine Rivers went on to sell more than half a million copies all over the world. Her novel The Last Sin Eater was adapted into a feature film in the year 2007, which was directed by Michael Landon Jr. The film was distributed by the Fox Faith distributors. Throughout her career as a novelist, Francine has won a number of literary awards. Some of the prestigious ones include the ECPA Gold Medallion Award, the Hot Medallion Award and the Christy Award. Her successful career as an author has allowed Francine to become a member of the Hall of Fame of the Romance Writers of America. Francine has also won the highest award in the romantic fiction, the RWA RITA Award for 4 times in her career in the Best Historical Romance category. As of today, she lives happily along with her husband Rick Rivers in northern California. Francine is blessed with 3 children, Shannon, Travis and Trevor, and 5 grandchildren. Living in northern California allowed Francine to set many of her contemporary novels there. She likes to enjoy spending some quality time with her family in California. She says that she is very much thankful to the Lord Jesus for everything that he has provided her in her life. She even dedicates her success and fame as a writer to the Christ and uses her writing works to get closer to him spiritually. Francine uses her writings to praise and worship Jesus for everything in her life.
Francine Rivers has written a total of 4 novel series’ in her career, one of which is the Mark of the Lion series, which consists of 3 novels published between the years 1993 and 1995. The first novel of the series was titled ‘A Voice in the Wind’ which was published in the year 1993 by the Tyndale House Publishers. The plot of the novel deals with the main characters Atretes, Julia Valerian, Marcus Lucianus Valerian and Hadassah. The opening plot of the novel shows the story of Hadassah, who is a young slave of the Christian-Jewish origin in the Roman Empire. She gets captured by the Roman soldiers and all her family member get killed by them. She was made to work as a slave to Julia, who is a spoiled Roman woman. As time passes by, Julia begins to trust Hadassah because of her faithful and kind nature. Initially fearful about many things, she gains the courage later to tell everyone about the God that she worships. In the meanwhile, she thinks that the love Julia’s brother Marcus was the trick of Satan to pull her away from God. But Marcus seems to love her from his heart and expects her to love him in the same way. Hadassah’s faith in Christianity gets challenged throughout the novel, but she remains with it and eventually becomes successful in overcoming her harsh life as a slave.
The second novel of the series was published in the year 1994 by the Tyndale House Publishers and was titled ‘An Echo in the Darkness’. The novel continues from where the first novel of the series had ended and revolves around the same set of characters. In the opening sequence of the novel, Hadassah is thrown in front of the lions because of her faith in Christianity. When a young physician named Alexander searchers for a body for examining it and carrying out his studies to strengthen his knowledge as a physician, he chooses Hadassah’s body. However, he discovers that she is alive. He saves her and nurses her till she gains back her health. Slowly she becomes able to come out of her crippled status and starts walking and talking. On learning that Hadassah is dead, Marcus decides to visit Israel and study about her God. On the other hand, Julia contracts a fatal disease due to her sexual behavior and is on the verge of dying. On hearing about her miserable condition, Hadassah decides to take care of her illness. However, she develops feelings for Alexander and confesses in front of him before leaving. Seeing Julia in her dying state, Hadassah feels sorry for her and forgives her for throwing her in front of the lions because of her faith in Christianity.
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4 Responses to “Francine Rivers”
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I have read the series titled “The Heart of the Lion” series and couldn’t put
them down Also read many of her other novels and recommend any and all
of them. I tell my Christian and non Christian friends about them always hoping they will be a witness to Christ. She is my favorite author.
Hello, is there a sequel to Bridge to Haven? What ever happened to Susan?
Unfortunately, as of right now that is just a standalone novel.
My niece introduced me to her book a voice in the Wind I have read all her Christian books and I have gotten my friends all to read them we are all amazed in love them we think they apply today more than ever thank you 4 such good reads