While the book was at times a bit slow moving, especially in the beginning, the overall story was memorable and moving. Bob had such character and faith in God that helped him to endure the disappointment of a forced career change, courage in a precarious undercover work in a violent and oppressive communist country/city, and hope and gratitude in a depraved and damaging captivity in a Soviet prison.

It is amazing how Bob was able to keep an attitude of grace, thankfulness, strength, and love despite how much oppression, harm and awful environment he endured. It was the epitome of “love your neighbor” in action. I am completely sure that that level of finding something to be thankful for and loving others is what got him thru that without being completely hopeless or give in to the horrible treatment. And even more so, that he was able to show one of his captors, who should have been his enemy, that kind of love and gratitude in the midst of that, which brought him to the Lord in the end. Man... what an example.

As for the writing itself, it was just slower, a bit dry and more drawn out than I’d prefer. I probably would have given it 3 stars if not for the great content of Bob’s experience and how much I admire him from it. The first quarter I got pretty bored but the rest picked up more. I could have done without the intro details at the beginning of the chapters also. They really weren’t very relevant to the story and didn’t really lend all that much to the theme in general. Often I struggled to figure out what they had to do with anything, and or what they were trying to convey being out of context like that.

Also, at the beginning of the book, the author listed a “chart of characters” for both real and fictional characters. But the list was so arbitrary it was odd. At first I thought it was important but then characters that were barely mentioned once or twice made it to the list, and major characters - even Luisa, one of the main ones, Murdock, etc - weren’t even mentioned at all. I would think it’d have just been better to omit it if it was going to be that random, because I kept going back to it trying to figure out what I was missing before realizing I wasn’t.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.