I recently finished reading Noah: Man of Destiny by Tim Chaffey & K. Marie Adams.  Since the Bible doesn’t say much about Noah before he started building the Ark the writers have speculated about what his life would have been like. This is Book 1 of The Remnant Trilogy and covers about 8 years of his early life.

It starts with him living with his parents and working on their farm but dreaming of a chance to apprentice as a wooodworker. He gets his chance at his coming of age party but not the way he expected. Instead of working with a local carpenter there’s a good chance he can apprentice with a shipbuilder but he’ll have to travel a long way from what he’s familiar with, in more ways than one.

The book is a well written and believable story about a young man raised in a God fearing community venturing into an increasingly godless society. Along the way Noah has to learn how to control his anger, live by his convictions in a world that doesn’t share them, and learn how to explain his faith in the Creator.

The setting has been well researched  and even though some license has been taken it lines up with what we know to be true. It does sometimes challenge commonly held beliefs that are not actually scripture based. It is what all Christian fiction should be both entertaining and thought provoking.

I really like the non-fiction sections they have included in the back. I like the explanations of parts of the story being inspired by other passages of scripture to keep it closely tied to the Bible. I recognized that some of the animal descriptions lined up with exhibits for the Ark Encounter (that Tim Chaffey is content manager for) and look forward to looking for a few of the other ties between the book and the exhibits on my next visit to the Ark. But by far the best non-fiction section is Answering Questions Raised by This Book. It gives explanations for a lot of the choices they made in writing the story and helps you sort fact from fiction. It it also useful for answering some skeptics about the world before the flood.

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Though since I know Noah and his wife are the only characters we’ve met so far that will survive the flood, part of me is dreading seeing the other characters I’ve meet and liked fall, in one manner or another, to the evil of the world.

I can recommend Noah: Man of Destiny to those who like Christian historical fiction or anyone trying to figure out what Noah might have been like.

This book is available for purchase at

Amazon 

Answers in Genesis

Books-A-Million

and many other book stores

 

Master Books provided this book free for review. I was not required to give a positive review only an honest one.