Reviewed by Dr Darren Cronshaw in Witness Magazine (Nov 2010) and buv.com and posted to Amazon.com):
If we would need four to eight planets for everyone in the world to live the way we do in Australia , what would it be like to live in a post-industrial-reliant world? Charles Fivaz's Heartland: A Parable offers one imaginative 22nd century narrative.
Indigenous people have returned to a subsistence hunting and gathering lifestyle, but four different tribes still suffer from themes of our day – pride, exclusion, distrust. The writer, from his experience in South Africa and Australia, knows what it is to experience prejudice, conflict and exclusion. He explores yearnings for journeying, belonging, and dreaming and acting for a better world.
The story at one level one is of a young girl, Hannah, on an unexpected and spontaneous journey of exploration as she comes of age. She is searching for her identity and her tribal origins. One of her diary entries describes her gladness to learn of her history: ‘These are my roots. It’s about where I come from. My story is older than I thought and has unfolded in ways I never knew about’ (pp.24-25).
Always a step behind, her father, Adam, relentlessly and lovingly pursues her. But he has to also accept the grief of earlier losing his wife, and the depression and desperation that caused.
Friends along the way help them on their search. At crucial times of almost giving up, companions appear to help them through their ‘dark night of the soul’. Stories from these guides foster calmness and courage for the journey.
The communities they travel through grapple with tolerance and inclusion, and have been forgetting and relearning sustainable farming practices. Some are willing to learn from and rely on others, and a Master Farmer figure inspires a dream of cooperation between farms and tribes.
Thus Hannah’s journey is her rite of passage, and inspires truth and reconciliation in her community from a surprising final source at the centre of the desert.
Heartland is an enjoyable read as a story. It makes no explicit Christian connections. But at a deeper level it is challengingly relevant for indigenous relations, ecumenism and interreligious understanding. It invites pilgrimage and listening, spiritual retreat and sustainable living. It is an invitation to embrace a dream of unity and cooperation for the faith, land and environment that we share in common.
Heartland was short listed for the CALEB Prize for faith-inspired writing 2010.
These three reviews appeared on omegawriters.com in relation to the Caleb Prize:
Heartland is fantasy set in the future when we live a simple farming lifestyle. Charles Fivaz uses parable and analogy in ways that are both challenging and experiential. Hannah is on the verge of young adulthood and wrestling with what she sees as contradiction. Her spirit becomes both troubled and disturbed and she is compelled to recover for herself her mother’s unknown and hidden heritage. We journey with Hannah as she sets out on a pilgrimage of discovery with many unpredictable twists and turns. Each of the communities she visits reveals beauty and unexpected treasure that surprise her. Like all parables Heartland tells a profound truth and I can thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who has felt the deep pain of religious separation or the scandal of denominational bias.
Dell Sadler *********************************
In the foreword the author notes that the purpose of a powerful vision can be to impel a person to “reflect more deeply on a living circumstance that needs attention or resolution.” He sees parables as serving a similar purpose. In what seems to be a simple narrative the reader is thrust far into the 21st century and taken on a quest with the main protagonist Hannah. But the open structure of the story allows the reader to both follow the plot and contemplate its underlying meanings. The author’s pen pictures cleverly create the minimalist atmospherics of a self-sufficient futuristic society, an array of unique landscapes, a realistic traditional aboriginal culture, and a questioning mindset amongst the travelers. For such a short story, there is much for the reader to ponder. At the end of this compelling, high-impact tale I could not help comparing it to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. Highly recommended!
Natalie Schwartz of Australian Churches Library Association
*********************************
This is a parable, which looks at the different ‘cultures’ and ‘belief systems’ that keep us separated, yet should unite us. It is a message to the different Christian denominations that we all follow the same Lord and are empowered by the same Source, the Holy Spirit. It’s simply yet beautifully told, and is a story that lingers long after the book is closed.
This review was published in Issue No 2, 2010, of ECUMENICAL INTERRELIGIOUS NEWS (a joint newsletter of the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Uniting Church Ecumenical Committees, Brisbane):
Heartland: a parable (immediate challenge with such a sub-title) took over my life, requiring three readings and more than a few quick checks, over about seventeen days. To me, the title was an invitation to search for levels of meaning and significance in every incident, setting, place, character and name --- thoughts and actions and destinies. Set more than 150 years in the future yet not a space adventure, it is very much a story of the land and its people, indeed, a story of our times.
But, why a parable? A quick check in my Thesaurus gave alternative usages such as metaphor, allegory, fable, discourse and homily, and Heartland is all of these in its “post-industrial society … reverted to a simple farming lifestyle.”
Hannah and her search are the focus, enriched by her interactions with the people she meets and her experiences on the journey. … Peoples’ names are interesting. Hannah meets Wedjeegle who gives her a new name - Ma-Puna, meaning Sea Turtle - turtle ready to lay her eggs on a very specific beach. Wedjeegle, incidentally, feels no need to explain his own name.
And the title! That the story is told on several levels enriches the readers’ experience as understanding grows. The Elder had said that Hannah “is searching for truth” and we, the readers, will know what truth she seeks, why she seeks it, that she will find it and what she learns when she follows “a personal dream”. The Schillebeeckx inscription on page 3 indicates not only the outcome of Hannah’s search but also how we might achieve ours.
Charles Fivaz has given us a discourse to carry in our hearts, minds, actions and goals.
Review in Kairos: Volume 22, Issue 5, 3 April 2011 - By David Schütz
Heartland: A Parable By Charles Fivaz, Book Pal, 2010
When Jesus wanted to get a difficult concept across to his disciples, he invariably used a parable. Charles Fivaz has written ‘a parable’ to help his readers realise that by their divisions “Christians … are living a profound contradiction that amounts to a scandal”.
Heartland is Fivaz’s first published story, a novella which comes in at just under 100 pages and can easily be read in one sitting. It tells the story of Hannah, a young girl whose mother has recently died. Hannah runs away from her homeland to seek her mother’s people. When she arrives among her mother’s people, she finds that they do things differently from the way she was brought up, yet she also learns to appreciate their way of life. Still, she finds that far from being at the end of her journey, she is only just at the beginning. She travels to other lands and to other tribes and experiences the ways they live before finally reaching the goal of her pilgrimage.
Her distraught and grieving father sets out to find her, following in her footsteps but always remaining just one step behind his daughter. Her search becomes his also, as he tries to understand her motives and what drives her. He is joined by those among whom she has lived on her journey, until they are all drawn together at her final destination.
Heartland has a map at the start to help the reader visualise Hannah’s journey. The country is divided into four parts by borders in the shape of a cross, with a ‘vacant’ territory in the centre roughly in the shape of a heart. This gives the story its title, Heartland.
Strictly speaking, Fivaz’s ‘parable’ is actually more of an allegory, and imitates the form of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. C.S. Lewis’ first book was also in this genre (The Pilgrim’s Regress), but Fivaz’s story also has something in common with Lewis’ other best seller, Mere Christianity.
The allegory can be viewed as a journey to the centre, a journey to the heart, in which the traveller learns something important about the nature of the Christian community while experiencing both the richness and the contradiction of the many different ways in which Christianity is practised. It holds out hope that there is a way in which these divided ‘lands’ might come together in the common ‘Heartland’ from which they have their origins.
Fivaz has put a lot of imagination into writing this allegorical novella, and shows considerable talent for story telling. Those who live in ‘interchurch families’ – families in which the parents belong to different Christian denominations – will find this especially useful, as will anyone who is struggling for a way to overcome the division between Christians which “openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalises the world, and damages the holy cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature” (Vatican II).
Heartland: A Parable is available from www.bookpal.com.au
David Schütz is the Executive Officer of the Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission, Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne
This review was published in The Southern Cross (South Africa's National Catholic Weekly)on 9th September 2011
Reviewed by Bob Berry
Deep inside all of us, whether Christian or of other faiths, there is a continuing need to search for truth, unconsciously making a journey towards the spiritual source of life. Such a journey is one of the several themes that run through this thought-provoking book which, although set in a fictional future world, is much more than a work of fiction.
It is the essence of a dream, expressing the author’s deeply felt desire that today’s ecumenical movements must overcome the denominational boundaries that keep Christians apart and advance the impetus towards unity and overcoming prejudice. Parables, says author Charles Fivaz, are like dreams. “When you’ve had a significant dream you’ve told yourself a story, and when you tell someone else that story or write it down, you realise it’s about some aspect of your life that needs attention right now. The dream is a fiction narrative but it is a ‘true’ story.”
The setting is rural Australia in the 22nd century. After the collapse of industrial society, the world has returned to a basic simple farming way of life, clinging to some traditions that survived the old era. Despite such radical changes, however, there are still strong divisions among peoples — in thought, culture, ethics and belief — as humanity continues on its usual course.
The location could be a quiet agricultural way of life anywhere in the world, but the Aussie link is not surprising: the author is an expatriate South African ex-seminarian living in Melbourne. He studied for the priesthood in Cape Town from 1985-88 and is a former contributor to The Southern Cross. Today his life in Australia is very much bound up with the ecumenical ideal: the search for a common identity which is the thread running through the story.
After the death of her mother the young girl Hannah leaves home and treks through the countryside in search of her mother’s origins. Her community decides she is missing, presumed drowned. But her father Adam refuses to accept this and goes in search of her.
Their geographic world is divided into huge farms with vast inhospitable distances in-between. Daughter and father are in fact searching for new meaning in their lives. It is a moving story of hardship and a time of trial and change for both.
The wilderness has its direct parallel in the Australian Outback with its mystical dreamtime exemplified in Hannah’s meetings with the Aborigine Wedjeegle who helps her find purpose in her life with his fascinating creationist stories of how water came to the Earth. Adam also finds spiritual calm and a new dimension in his search for peace inside as he follows his daughter from farm to farm and through barren wilderness, in the process gaining insight into her resourcefulness and courage.
Heartland is well-written and has plenty of pace and tension. It is a story of anguish and of spiritual upliftment, leading the reader dramatically, chapter by chapter, through elation and then sorrow towards a final unifying truth.
I raced through the book quickly, and then re-read it slowly. It is inspired writing and the author is indebted for this inspiration to Samuel Clear whose courage and daring took him on an 18-month-long life-threatening pilgrimage across the world to advance the cause of Christian unity. The book is dedicated to him.
Bob Berry is a retired journalist with The Star in Johannesburg. Heartlands can be ordered from amazon.com or directly through www.heartlandaparable.com.
This book review appeared in WellSpring (www.wellspringcentre.org.au) in October 2011:
Book Review
Heartland : A Parable By Charles Fivaz
Book Pal 2010
The year is 2174 but there are no massive technological advances. On the contrary, the oil-driven economy of the 21st century has collapsed and humankind has reverted to a lifestyle of a much earlier age in which people live and make their living in relationship to the land. There are four large farms centred on a vacant wasteland which contains the Source that sustains them all. Their farming principals are based on the teachings of the Master Farmer – teachings of sustainability, simplicity and respect for the land and all its inhabitants.
This sounds like an idyllic situation, but over the years, something has gone terribly wrong as splinter groups, breaking off from the original farm, have formulated their own interpretations of the Master’s teachings, leading to feelings of superiority, lack of acceptance and even intolerance of other farms and their ways.
Out of this situation comes Hannah from the original farm. On the verge of adulthood, she sets out on a quest of discovery which gradually turns into a mission. Early on, she encounters an Indigenous tribesman who’s wisdom and true connection with the land is in stark contrast to that of Hannah’s own community. He gives her a sense of identity that will sustain her throughout her journey.
Saddened by her community’s lack of acceptance of her mother, who came from another farm, Hannah sets out in search of her origins and her first discovery is that while people may discriminate, the land blesses all alike. She continues to travel and work her way around the farms until she finally meets a community where some people have a broader vision of the Master’s teachings and of cooperation between the farms.
Meanwhile her father Adam, struggling with his own loss, sets out to find her. Always just managing to miss her, he learns that faith is not willpower, and only in weakness can it bloom.
Eventually Hannah leads him and his companions into the Heartland where, in spite of tragic events, they manage to locate the Source. Only out of these circumstances can healing and reconciliation begin.
The landscape is beautifully captured in this inward and outward journey. It is a story of vision and hope, of sacrifice and courage where, in order to bear fruit, a seed must first fall into the ground and die.
To view a sample of book reviews of Heartland click on Comments below
Reviewed by Dr Darren Cronshaw in Witness Magazine (Nov 2010) and buv.com and posted to Amazon.com):
ReplyDeleteIf we would need four to eight planets for everyone in the world to live the way we do in Australia , what would it be like to live in a post-industrial-reliant world? Charles Fivaz's Heartland: A Parable offers one imaginative 22nd century narrative.
Indigenous people have returned to a subsistence hunting and gathering lifestyle, but four different tribes still suffer from themes of our day – pride, exclusion, distrust. The writer, from his experience in South Africa and Australia, knows what it is to experience prejudice, conflict and exclusion. He explores yearnings for journeying, belonging, and dreaming and acting for a better world.
The story at one level one is of a young girl, Hannah, on an unexpected and spontaneous journey of exploration as she comes of age. She is searching for her identity and her tribal origins. One of her diary entries describes her gladness to learn of her history: ‘These are my roots. It’s about where I come from. My story is older than I thought and has unfolded in ways I never knew about’ (pp.24-25).
Always a step behind, her father, Adam, relentlessly and lovingly pursues her. But he has to also accept the grief of earlier losing his wife, and the depression and desperation that caused.
Friends along the way help them on their search. At crucial times of almost giving up, companions appear to help them through their ‘dark night of the soul’. Stories from these guides foster calmness and courage for the journey.
The communities they travel through grapple with tolerance and inclusion, and have been forgetting and relearning sustainable farming practices. Some are willing to learn from and rely on others, and a Master Farmer figure inspires a dream of cooperation between farms and tribes.
Thus Hannah’s journey is her rite of passage, and inspires truth and reconciliation in her community from a surprising final source at the centre of the desert.
Heartland is an enjoyable read as a story. It makes no explicit Christian connections. But at a deeper level it is challengingly relevant for indigenous relations, ecumenism and interreligious understanding. It invites pilgrimage and listening, spiritual retreat and sustainable living. It is an invitation to embrace a dream of unity and cooperation for the faith, land and environment that we share in common.
Heartland was short listed for the CALEB Prize for faith-inspired writing 2010.
ReplyDeleteThese three reviews appeared on omegawriters.com in relation to the Caleb Prize:
Heartland is fantasy set in the future when we live a simple farming lifestyle. Charles Fivaz uses parable and analogy in ways that are both challenging and experiential. Hannah is on the verge of young adulthood and wrestling with what she sees as contradiction. Her spirit becomes both troubled and disturbed and she is compelled to recover for herself her mother’s unknown and hidden heritage. We journey with Hannah as she sets out on a pilgrimage of discovery with many unpredictable twists and turns. Each of the communities she visits reveals beauty and unexpected treasure that surprise her.
Like all parables Heartland tells a profound truth and I can thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who has felt the deep pain of religious separation or the scandal of denominational bias.
Dell Sadler
*********************************
In the foreword the author notes that the purpose of a powerful vision can be to impel a person to “reflect more deeply on a living circumstance that needs attention or resolution.” He sees parables as serving a similar purpose. In what seems to be a simple narrative the reader is thrust far into the 21st century and taken on a quest with the main protagonist Hannah. But the open structure of the story allows the reader to both follow the plot and contemplate its underlying meanings. The author’s pen pictures cleverly create the minimalist atmospherics of a self-sufficient futuristic society, an array of unique landscapes, a realistic traditional aboriginal culture, and a questioning mindset amongst the travelers. For such a short story, there is much for the reader to ponder. At the end of this compelling, high-impact tale I could not help comparing it to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. Highly recommended!
Natalie Schwartz of Australian Churches Library Association
*********************************
This is a parable, which looks at the different ‘cultures’ and ‘belief systems’ that keep us separated, yet should unite us. It is a message to the different Christian denominations that we all follow the same Lord and are empowered by the same Source, the Holy Spirit. It’s simply yet beautifully told, and is a story that lingers long after the book is closed.
WN
This review was published in Issue No 2, 2010, of ECUMENICAL INTERRELIGIOUS NEWS (a joint newsletter of the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Uniting Church Ecumenical Committees, Brisbane):
ReplyDeleteHeartland: a parable (immediate challenge with such a sub-title) took over my life,
requiring three readings and more than a few quick checks, over about seventeen days. To me, the title was an invitation to search for levels of meaning and significance in every incident, setting, place, character and name --- thoughts and actions and destinies. Set more than 150 years in the future yet not a space adventure, it is very much a story of the land and its people, indeed, a story of our times.
But, why a parable? A quick check in my Thesaurus gave alternative usages such as metaphor, allegory, fable, discourse and homily, and Heartland is all of these in its “post-industrial society … reverted to a simple farming lifestyle.”
Hannah and her search are the focus, enriched by her interactions with the people she meets and her experiences on the journey.
…
Peoples’ names are interesting. Hannah meets Wedjeegle who gives her a new name - Ma-Puna, meaning Sea Turtle - turtle ready to lay her eggs on a very specific beach. Wedjeegle, incidentally, feels no need to explain his own name.
And the title! That the story is told on several levels enriches the readers’ experience as understanding grows. The Elder had said that Hannah “is searching for truth” and we, the readers, will know what truth she seeks, why she seeks it, that she will find it and
what she learns when she follows “a personal dream”. The Schillebeeckx inscription on page 3 indicates not only the outcome of Hannah’s search but also how we might achieve ours.
Charles Fivaz has given us a discourse to carry in our hearts, minds, actions and goals.
Reviewed by Toni Pride
Review in Kairos: Volume 22, Issue 5, 3 April 2011
ReplyDelete- By David Schütz
Heartland: A Parable
By Charles Fivaz, Book Pal, 2010
When Jesus wanted to get a difficult concept across to his disciples, he invariably used a parable. Charles Fivaz has written ‘a parable’ to help his readers realise that by their divisions “Christians … are living a profound contradiction that amounts to a scandal”.
Heartland is Fivaz’s first published story, a novella which comes in at just under 100 pages and can easily be read in one sitting. It tells the story of Hannah, a young girl whose mother has recently died. Hannah runs away from her homeland to seek her mother’s people. When she arrives among her mother’s people, she finds that they do things differently from the way she was brought up, yet she also learns to appreciate their way of life. Still, she finds that far from being at the end of her journey, she is only just at the beginning. She travels to other lands and to other tribes and experiences the ways they live before finally reaching the goal of her pilgrimage.
Her distraught and grieving father sets out to find her, following in her footsteps but always remaining just one step behind his daughter. Her search becomes his also, as he tries to understand her motives and what drives her. He is joined by those among whom she has lived on her journey, until they are all drawn together at her final destination.
Heartland has a map at the start to help the reader visualise Hannah’s journey. The country is divided into four parts by borders in the shape of a cross, with a ‘vacant’ territory in the centre roughly in the shape of a heart. This gives the story its title, Heartland.
Strictly speaking, Fivaz’s ‘parable’ is actually more of an allegory, and imitates the form of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. C.S. Lewis’ first book was also in this genre (The Pilgrim’s Regress), but Fivaz’s story also has something in common with Lewis’ other best seller, Mere Christianity.
The allegory can be viewed as a journey to the centre, a journey to the heart, in which the traveller learns something important about the nature of the Christian community while experiencing both the richness and the contradiction of the many different ways in which Christianity is practised. It holds out hope that there is a way in which these divided ‘lands’ might come together in the common ‘Heartland’ from which they have their origins.
Fivaz has put a lot of imagination into writing this allegorical novella, and shows considerable talent for story telling. Those who live in ‘interchurch families’ – families in which the parents belong to different Christian denominations – will find this especially useful, as will anyone who is struggling for a way to overcome the division between Christians which “openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalises the world, and damages the holy cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature” (Vatican II).
Heartland: A Parable is available from www.bookpal.com.au
David Schütz is the Executive Officer of the Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission, Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne
This review was published in The Southern Cross (South Africa's National Catholic Weekly)on 9th September 2011
ReplyDeleteReviewed by Bob Berry
Deep inside all of us, whether Christian or of other faiths, there is a continuing need to search for truth, unconsciously making a journey towards the spiritual source of life. Such a journey is one of the several themes that run through this thought-provoking book which, although set in a fictional future world, is much more than a work of fiction.
It is the essence of a dream, expressing the author’s deeply felt desire that today’s ecumenical movements must overcome the denominational boundaries that keep Christians apart and advance the impetus towards unity and overcoming prejudice. Parables, says author Charles Fivaz, are like dreams. “When you’ve had a significant dream you’ve told yourself a story, and when you tell someone else that story or write it down, you realise it’s about some aspect of your life that needs attention right now. The dream is a fiction narrative but it is a ‘true’ story.”
The setting is rural Australia in the 22nd century. After the collapse of industrial society, the world has returned to a basic simple farming way of life, clinging to some traditions that survived the old era. Despite such radical changes, however, there are still strong divisions among peoples — in thought, culture, ethics and belief — as humanity continues on its usual course.
The location could be a quiet agricultural way of life anywhere in the world, but the Aussie link is not surprising: the author is an expatriate South African ex-seminarian living in Melbourne. He studied for the priesthood in Cape Town from 1985-88 and is a former contributor to The Southern Cross. Today his life in Australia is very much bound up with the ecumenical ideal: the search for a common identity which is the thread running through the story.
After the death of her mother the young girl Hannah leaves home and treks through the countryside in search of her mother’s origins. Her community decides she is missing, presumed drowned. But her father Adam refuses to accept this and goes in search of her.
Their geographic world is divided into huge farms with vast inhospitable distances in-between. Daughter and father are in fact searching for new meaning in their lives. It is a moving story of hardship and a time of trial and change for both.
The wilderness has its direct parallel in the Australian Outback with its mystical dreamtime exemplified in Hannah’s meetings with the Aborigine Wedjeegle who helps her find purpose in her life with his fascinating creationist stories of how water came to the Earth. Adam also finds spiritual calm and a new dimension in his search for peace inside as he follows his daughter from farm to farm and through barren wilderness, in the process gaining insight into her resourcefulness and courage.
Heartland is well-written and has plenty of pace and tension. It is a story of anguish and of spiritual upliftment, leading the reader dramatically, chapter by chapter, through elation and then sorrow towards a final unifying truth.
I raced through the book quickly, and then re-read it slowly. It is inspired writing and the author is indebted for this inspiration to Samuel Clear whose courage and daring took him on an 18-month-long life-threatening pilgrimage across the world to advance the cause of Christian unity. The book is dedicated to him.
Bob Berry is a retired journalist with The Star in Johannesburg. Heartlands can be ordered from amazon.com or directly through www.heartlandaparable.com.
This book review appeared in WellSpring (www.wellspringcentre.org.au) in October 2011:
ReplyDeleteBook Review
Heartland : A Parable
By Charles Fivaz
Book Pal 2010
The year is 2174 but there are no massive technological advances. On the contrary, the oil-driven economy of the 21st century has collapsed and humankind has reverted to a lifestyle of a much earlier age in which people live and make their living in relationship to the land. There are four large farms centred on a vacant wasteland which contains the Source that sustains them all. Their farming principals are based on the teachings of the Master Farmer – teachings of sustainability, simplicity and respect for the land and all its inhabitants.
This sounds like an idyllic situation, but over the years, something has gone terribly wrong as splinter groups, breaking off from the original farm, have formulated their own interpretations of the Master’s teachings, leading to feelings of superiority, lack of acceptance and even intolerance of other farms and their ways.
Out of this situation comes Hannah from the original farm. On the verge of adulthood, she sets out on a quest of discovery which gradually turns into a mission. Early on, she encounters an Indigenous tribesman who’s wisdom and true connection with the land is in stark contrast to that of Hannah’s own community. He gives her a sense of identity that will sustain her throughout her journey.
Saddened by her community’s lack of acceptance of her mother, who came from another farm, Hannah sets out in search of her origins and her first discovery is that while people may discriminate, the land blesses all alike. She continues to travel and work her way around the farms until she finally meets a community where some people have a broader vision of the Master’s teachings and of cooperation between the farms.
Meanwhile her father Adam, struggling with his own loss, sets out to find her. Always just managing to miss her, he learns that faith is not willpower, and only in weakness can it bloom.
Eventually Hannah leads him and his companions into the Heartland where, in spite of tragic events, they manage to locate the Source. Only out of these circumstances can healing and reconciliation begin.
The landscape is beautifully captured in this inward and outward journey. It is a story of vision and hope, of sacrifice and courage where, in order to bear fruit, a seed must first fall into the ground and die.
Lynne Roberts