The Missionary, by William Carmichael and David Lambert is about an American couple who are missionaries in Venezuela.  It is touching to read about the couple caring for the unloved and unwanted children in the streets of Caracas, while raising their own son.  They live in a small house in Hope Village, where the children are housed, nursed back to health, and go to school.  The husband, David, feels hopeless, as if he is just a drop in the bucket, as he rescues a few children while he has to watch many more stay alone, homeless, and suffering.  Christie, herself an orphan with a tragic past, lives for each child they see in the moment.  She feels that the world is saved for that child, right now.  David, in his frustration and zeal to help Hope Village, gets “accidentally-on-purpose” involved in a coup trying to remove an unjust dictator who is living it up while the masses suffer.  He didn’t know that there was going to be an attempted murder, and that people would be maimed, tortured, and killed along the way.  I’m not sure how one can think you can plan a government overthrow without killing anyone or posing any danger to themselves or their family- but that is David’s story, and he is sticking to it!  LOL.  But really, he did seem to believe it.  This non-missionary woman who is feeling a little jaded at the moment just doesn’t quite understand HOW a grown man can really believe that- but, then, neither could his wife, so I guess it isn’t just me, haha. 
As the title suggests, The Missionary is Christian literature, and there are many mentions and references to God, Christianity, prayer, church, and religion.  While the plot and storyline are somewhat far fetched, it was a “feel good” book that had a mostly-happy ending for the main characters.   (Note- there was some violent aspects, I say “feel good” because of all the people in the book that were doing good, and that it ended on an upbeat.) 
It is fast paced, and you do want to keep reading to see what happens next. 
You can purchase The Missionary from Deep River Books or on their website.  Make sure to Like Deep River Books on Facebook and Follow them on Twitter to keep up with all their latest news  🙂

David and his wife Christie rescue impoverished children in the slums of Venezuela. But for David, that’s not enough. The supply of homeless children is endless because of the corrupt policies of the Venezuelan government.

In a rare moment of anger, David lashes out publicly against the government, unaware of the chain reaction that will soon follow.

When the CIA offers David a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play a key role in a “bloodless” coup, he decides to go for it. But little by little, he falls into an unimaginable web of deceit that ends in a desperate, life-or-death gamble to flee the country with his wife and son, with all the resources of a corrupt dictatorship at their heels.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing by By Anuradha Roy was a sad story, made even a sort of tragic in that it was several generations worth of sadness.  Taking place from the early 1900’s to the years just following India’s Partition in 1947, the book covers some critical points in India’s recent history as well as the caste system.  The novel begins with a man moving his wife to a small village from busy Calcutta, India, where all her family and friends are, and completely isolating her.  The woman raises her children, but ends up going mad by the time she is 50 years old.  The family locks her away in her room.  This is not done with any direct animosity by the other characters, and it is accepted by the woman (who is the family matriarch) which is just confusing to me as a western reader.  It seems so malicious.  Most of the book does, but then it is neither my culture nor my time.   The actions of most of the characters, most of the time, made me want to rip my hair out because they were so against what they themselves wanted or desired.  It was all so self destructive, and so induced by guilt.  And pressure, expectations of family and society.  I think that the main word of the book should be “guilt”.  That was the driving force behind everything.  Such a melancholy book.  While I was completely wrapped up in it for the first half, by the second half, I was annoyed by the behavior of the characters and their treatment of one another.  By the end, I didn’t even like the characters very much anymore, let alone feel anything for them. 
There are other characters in this book- an adopted boy (Mukunda), the biological sister (Bakul, who is a real piece of work, but as an adult she is more likable) well-intentioned, widowed father (Nirmal) and widowed relative (Meera) who comes to care for his daughter and adopted son.  It was too bad that they shoved Meera off, she was a good, solid, and likable character, and it would have been nice to see more of her.  I wanted to like Mukunda, but he grew up to be such an amazing jerk, despite the fact that he was handed many second chances in his life.  At least 4 life altering second chances. 
I really thought I was going to love this book.  And I did- love the first half.  It would have been great to have a more “ended” ending, with less loose ends, and more fully developed characters.  The ones who were mentioned so much should really have been “finished”.  It was all so depressing, frustrating, and mean.  I was sad and angry when I was reading it, and I feel aggravated writing about it.  Kind of like a “what a world!”  feeling.  Why must people hate each other so much, and love to make each other suffer?  Maybe that is the word for the book, not guilt- “suffering”.  Hmmm…that’s a toss up.

On the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, a family lives in solitude in their vast new house. Here, lives intertwine and unravel. A widower struggles with his love for an unmarried cousin. Bakul, a motherless daughter, runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined in a room at the top of the house, a matriarch goes slowly mad; her husband searches for its cause as he shapes and reshapes his garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else, and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. He prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, but his thoughts stay with his home, with Bakul, with all that he has lost—and he knows that he must return.