

Another romance book with secrets and deceptions!
It was good but no keeper

A Point of DepartureThere are several answers. One is, Learn a language other than English, in order to study the existing literature or websites about the TWO Dominican congregations of Bethany (Rumer Godden chose not to mention that World War I split the congregation in two, in 1914, and both groups of Sisters of Bethany remain separate yet friendly.) Among European languages, French is your best bet. Pere Marie-Jean-Joseph Lataste OP, Bethany's Dominican priest founder, is the subject of an anthology, Precheur de la Misericorde (meaning Preacher of Mercy), from the French Dominican publishing house, Les Editions du Cerf. (Yes, the late great Mrs. Godden did her homework: it is easy to find her English translations of Pere Lataste's words and pull up the French originals in the Cerf anthology.) French is not your only Continental-language option: books have also been published in Italian, German, Dutch, and, recently, Latvian!
In English -- there's the rub. I review Hope Beyond Hope from the perspective of having read about the Congregation of Bethany in French and German. The bad news is: Hope beyond Hope is a far inferior book to the Bethany literature in the European languages. The weakest link is the translator, Jerry Hearne, whose English is clumsy, unidiomatic, ultimately difficult to digest. The author herself, identified as Emmanuelle-Marie, first wrote this book in Italian, then revised it herself and rewrote it in French; either of those versions are better-written than is Hope Beyond Hope, which is out of print. The other news is: That's all there is in English, to date, about the Dominican Sisters of Bethany. One has to have a point of departure, to start from somewhere, and Hope Beyond Hope is better than nothing. If God so wills, someday there will be books written in English about the Dominicans of Bethany that will be a better quality than is this one.


Not the best...It's the standard Harlequin Romance, nothing exceptional.


This book has everything except what I need




