Rate: 4/5
I like to call this book a "love story gone bad". James Piper, protagonist, is an orphaned teenager who is looking for the greater good in the society. In whatever case it may be or whatever he does to achieve it, falling in love just opens his eyes to a whole new world, almost changing whatever he had planned for his future. Although it can be a good thing if we learned how to embrace love but still achieve our goals we set for ourselves, in James' case, it was a fight for love. Materia Mahmoud, his one and only, has a father who is overprotective of her. But, there's no power stronger than love. James and Materia flee and get married and have children. James has to go on the war duty to protect his country, leaving Materia behind. When he comes back home after years of service, things have changed a lot with their daughters grown up. I wonder how soldiers in reality deal with these situations. But there isn't any trend to it, everyone's different. Anyway, James' life starts going on a downward spiral from his return. All of the problems are uncontrollable factors in his life and with consequences of his choices he makes through drinking a lot, sex, etc. His daughters, all grown up, start to have their own goals in life. One wants to be a in the opera, the other ones a rebel, and another one that really has everything going right for her. The problems are family issues and it just gets to point where he love his wife but he doesn't want to be with her. This book goes into the hardships of every character with many point of views. James soon dies but confesses everything to his daughter, Frances, who forgives him. I learned that even though families go through with so many problems, even though they end up going their own ways with thier own life to live, when anyone needs someone to reach out to, it's going to be someone from the family. I think the strength in the concept of family is shown very well in this book by encompassing every member in the family and getting into details with each one of them. I gave it 4 out of 5 because I felt the story was a bit streched at times where some problems could have ended earlier.
