One Sunday by Carrie Gerlach Cecil

About the book:


In this humorous and heartfelt novel, a beleaguered young woman must shed her career, identity, and power persona to learn how to love and forgive herself, others, and God.

At age thirty-seven, Alice Ferguson has everything an ambitious, intellectual, self-made woman could want. She has captured a career as an editor of a tabloid magazine, launched her own website full of Hollywood gossip, and even clawed her way into a second-hand pair of Prada shoes. She has also finally landed a husband—no small feat, as it required getting pregnant with his baby.

But when Alice becomes pregnant and experiences health problems, her world is turned upside down. To save her life and the life of her unborn child, she must leave Los Angeles and the stress of her bicoastal career, exchanging the late-night parties of sunny California for the suburbs of Nashville. With a weak smile and an even weaker heart, she soon finds herself living with a husband she barely knows, ensconced in a gated community brimming with perky, plastic, pony-tailed housewives. And then, at the gentle urging of a new friend, she agrees to attend church one Sunday afternoon.

What begins as an experiment beyond her comfort zone sparks something much bigger, as Alice begins to look deep within herself only to find insecurity, fear, and loneliness. One Sunday charts an endearing character’s journey from moral ambiguity through madness, tears, laughter, and heartbreak to a connection with the only One who can help heal her.



My review of One Sunday:


I lived my first twenty-nine years as an unbeliever.  A person can make a lot of mistakes and do a lot of stupid things during that time.  Not that becoming a Christian makes a person perfect, not even close, but it does change a person’s perspective on a variety of things and that’s putting it mildly.  I like to read novels about people who are every bit as imperfect as me.  I can already hear it, there will be people who find certain things about this book offensive, but those very offensive things are exactly the things that the author has used to make the biggest impact.  This book was not a light, fluffy read , but it was also not too heavy.  There was a good balance of heart and drama..  There are things that were difficult to digest, but the overall message of the profound love and forgiveness of Jesus is the whole point of the story and Carrie delivered it very well.

A lot of Alice’s story is told in flashbacks.  At first I found this distracting, but the more I read this book and the more I thought about my own life, I found it appropriate.  Since getting saved myself, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on things in the past that led me to Jesus.  Much of that reflection has taken place from a church pew.  As I thought about this, the flashbacks and the way this story was told, became much more meaningful.  I wouldn’t want to read a book like this all the time because it does deal with some difficult topics, but I did like the way Carrie inserted some humor at just the right moments.

I highly recommend One Sunday if you are looking for a novel that portrays the powerful love and forgiveness  of Jesus.





This book was provided for review by Howard Books.