Water From My Heart by Charles Martin ~ Book Review

Charlie Finn has been on his own since he was 16. Without much effort on his part he does well in school and earned himself a scholarship to Harvard.  Taking math and business he is then able to insert himself into the fast-paced world of finance.  Because of his hard growing up years Charlie has no problem with the indifference to people's hardships his business dealings creates.  But when working for a power hungry business executive comes to a unexpected end, Charlie ends up meeting and partnering with a high society drug dealer.  Once again his ability to keep his personal and work life separated and his wall of indifference high, he convinces himself he is just offering a service that the elite of society would find someone else to do for them if it wasn't him.  And meanwhile he can make himself a very rich man.   But when tragedy strikes it causes Charlie to head to an area of Costa Rica and Nicaragua where his former business dealings had left a group of innocent and devastated family coffee farmers.  By chance he meets a young woman whom he must rely on to help find his partner's family member.  And in the processCharlie comes face to face with who he is and what he has allowed his heart to become and whether he wants to pursue the real riches in life

Love, love, loved this latest story from Charles Martin.  My short description above definitely lacks the amount of details and nuances this wonderful story holds.  It was hard to write a description without giving away details but every twist and turn added up to make a story that I thought about for days, even weeks,  afterwards.  I couldn't pick up another book because this one kept mulling over in my heart.  The author takes a bit of a departure from his usual strong, moral male character and instead gives us a main male character who is very flawed.  Indifferent and heartless in his business life, the character of Charlie is quite a selfish individual and thinks he can separate his personal life from his business self  but will have to come to realize that the two intertwine.  It will take a woman and child who survived through horrible pain and loss and yet exude a joy and beauty and love that Charlie has never before experienced.  As usual, Charles Martin took my heart on a roller coaster ride of emotions.  Several times my husband looked over at me and asked what I was crying about.  He takes the high society lives of London and Miami and sets it against the poverty and simplicity of life in Nicaragua.  He takes the entitlement, the skewed values of most of North America and shines a light on it comparing it with the riches of what the Nicaraguan mountain people hold dear.  Woven into Charles Martin's story is a piece of himself that he experienced when he himself went and met Nicaraguan people who had been devastated when Hurricane Mitch, in 1998, hung over a volcanic lake until it overfilled causing a horrific mudslide that travelled at 100 mph down the mountain cutting a deadly path killing 3000 people.   This a beautiful story of fruit in the midst of horror, of true love and redemption that made me take a good hard look at my own indifferences in my own heart.  You cannot read this and not be moved.  Have I made you curious enough to run out and read it?  I hope so.  Not to be missed is the author's notes in the end where you are allowed a glimpse of where the story came from.

Reading Challenge Goals Met:  A book that made me cry, A book published this year, A book set in a different country, A book from an author I love but haven't read yet