Book Review: As I Have Loved You

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Can you tell that I've been reading a lot lately? I think I only read one book the whole summer...but I've been making up for lost time!

Several weeks ago I was in the LDS bookstore by myself. When I am there with Russ I don't feel like I can take too long, but this time I browsed as long as I wanted.

At the back of the bookstore is a shelf with used books on it, and I decided to see if they had anything interesting. I found some very early Jack Weyland books that I couldn't resist, and a copy of Patricia Holland's sweet book. (Which I bought before, but my other copy seems to have decided to live in Idaho instead of with me.) And then at the bottom of the shelf I saw a title. "As I Have Loved You," by Kitty de Ruyter.

It took me a minute to figure out why the title seemed familiar, and then it came back to me. Several years before my mom died she had purchased this book at the LDS bookstore in Atlanta. She told me that she had read this amazing book, but when I asked if I could read it she said that she had already loaned the book to my aunt. I never did remember to ask my aunt for the book, and in time I forgot about it.

"As I Have Loved You" is the story of Kitty de Ruyter's life. Born in Indonesia to a wealthy Dutch/Indonesian family, she spent most of WWII in a concentration camp along with her mother and sisters. After WWII the Indonesian natives rebelled against the Dutch colonization and a civil war began. Because they were not pure Indonesian, she and her family had to flee to a refugee camp until they could be sent to Holland.

Kitty's mother had a deep faith in God, which was evident both in the way she raised her children and the way she dealt with living in a concentration camp. Reading their experiences reminded me of reading "The Hiding Place." It was a good moment for me to read about strong faith in God in the face of such adversity.

I also felt a real connection to my mother as I read. As I read parts of the book that I could tell that she would have particularly enjoyed, I could almost feel her delight.

And that was wonderful.