Official Review: A Campfire Conversation by Luther Brooks
Posted: 30 Mar 2020, 17:42
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "A Campfire Conversation" by Luther Brooks.]
A Campfire Conversation by Luther Brooks is a short story about the author’s interaction with a mother and daughter who needed to hear God’s voice through him. Luke is a retired bachelor who decides to spend a weekend at the lake in his camper. As he’s sitting by the campfire, he sees a teenage girl wander by, looking forlorn. He asks God for the ability to help this girl, and eventually strikes up a conversation with her when she walks back by his campsite. After a couple of conversations, he finds out that her uncle recently killed himself, and her mother is forlorn. To make matters worse, her father is a serviceman stationed overseas. Luke talks to the mother and daughter about God’s plan for them and for her uncle and develops a relationship with them that leads him to support them until her father can return home.
The simple, genuine nature of the narrator and author made me like and trust him immediately. The story opens with him just wanting to have a weekend in nature, but he jumps at the chance to help another person. I liked how the story revolved around his relationship with God, and he would often include his silent and spoken prayers in the narration. He addresses God like an old friend, and this endeared him to me.
Although the protagonist is very likable, the story doesn’t give a lot of information about the other characters. Despite learning some very personal information about the mother and daughter, I don’t feel like I got to know them as people. The plot of the story is also very slow, as the author spends almost fifty pages explaining what happened at the lake over the course of three to four days. Each conversation is painstakingly related along with all of the author’s thoughts that happened while the conversation was going on.
In addition to the extremely slow pace of the story, the actual writing had some issues as well. The author alternates between present and past tense from sentence to sentence. He also alternates between first-person and third-person narration from sentence to sentence, addressing himself both as “I” and “Luke.” These two issues led to me being confused about the timeline and the author’s identity at different points in the story.
Overall, I would rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I liked the protagonist’s down-to-earth nature, but the story flowed extremely slowly. Besides the issues with tenses and point of view, I also found a variety of mistakes in the book, so it was obvious that it wasn’t professionally edited.
I would recommend this book to people who like easygoing, Christian narratives. It’s a feel-good story with a happy ending, but there’s certainly no action or drama. If you don’t mind the issues mentioned above and would like a short but slow-paced read, you might enjoy this book.
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A Campfire Conversation
View: on Bookshelves
A Campfire Conversation by Luther Brooks is a short story about the author’s interaction with a mother and daughter who needed to hear God’s voice through him. Luke is a retired bachelor who decides to spend a weekend at the lake in his camper. As he’s sitting by the campfire, he sees a teenage girl wander by, looking forlorn. He asks God for the ability to help this girl, and eventually strikes up a conversation with her when she walks back by his campsite. After a couple of conversations, he finds out that her uncle recently killed himself, and her mother is forlorn. To make matters worse, her father is a serviceman stationed overseas. Luke talks to the mother and daughter about God’s plan for them and for her uncle and develops a relationship with them that leads him to support them until her father can return home.
The simple, genuine nature of the narrator and author made me like and trust him immediately. The story opens with him just wanting to have a weekend in nature, but he jumps at the chance to help another person. I liked how the story revolved around his relationship with God, and he would often include his silent and spoken prayers in the narration. He addresses God like an old friend, and this endeared him to me.
Although the protagonist is very likable, the story doesn’t give a lot of information about the other characters. Despite learning some very personal information about the mother and daughter, I don’t feel like I got to know them as people. The plot of the story is also very slow, as the author spends almost fifty pages explaining what happened at the lake over the course of three to four days. Each conversation is painstakingly related along with all of the author’s thoughts that happened while the conversation was going on.
In addition to the extremely slow pace of the story, the actual writing had some issues as well. The author alternates between present and past tense from sentence to sentence. He also alternates between first-person and third-person narration from sentence to sentence, addressing himself both as “I” and “Luke.” These two issues led to me being confused about the timeline and the author’s identity at different points in the story.
Overall, I would rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I liked the protagonist’s down-to-earth nature, but the story flowed extremely slowly. Besides the issues with tenses and point of view, I also found a variety of mistakes in the book, so it was obvious that it wasn’t professionally edited.
I would recommend this book to people who like easygoing, Christian narratives. It’s a feel-good story with a happy ending, but there’s certainly no action or drama. If you don’t mind the issues mentioned above and would like a short but slow-paced read, you might enjoy this book.
******
A Campfire Conversation
View: on Bookshelves