Water from my Heart - Charles Martin

Charlie Finn is self-admittedly not a good person.  He uses people, he has no compassion for those who lose out on business deals, and he doesn't cry over anything.  Well, almost anything.  His amoral life and the legacy he's passed on to his godson have led to tragedy and grave danger for the few people he finds he may actually care about.  On a mission to right what wrongs he can, he finds that letting go of one's pain, anger, and sins may take a different form than he expected.

Wow.  This book was nothing like I expected.  It was so, so, so much more.  The author weaves Charlie's past and present together in alternating chapters until they converge, until the reader can separate the man Charlie has always been to the man who's recognizing that that isn't who he wants to be.  There is no excusing Charlie's past.  There is no excusing or whitewashing the choices he's made and the people he has hurt.  This is not a pretty book about someone who made an honest mistake with good intentions.  Charlie's intentions were definitely not good.  But Charlie knows that, and in that honesty, there is a chance for redemption.  When Charlie starts to get it, while hanging almost 300 feet deep into a well, he says, "Call me simple, but it was tough to miss the lesson.  It it's dark, and if you want light, you either need a source outside yourself, or you need to get to one - because nothing resident in me lit that hole."

This book was about Charlie's journey to awareness and redemption, but the journey would not have been complete without the other characters.  Not just ones who showed him the light, but even the ones in the darkness which serve to show how desperately he needed the light.  The author's notes at the end of the book indicate that several of the characters were based on actual people, and they are well-woven into the story to make it whole.

This is a book that will stick with me.  That will make me think twice about where my coffee comes from and how the person growing it makes far less than it takes me to buy it.  I give this book 5 stars; this is going to be a book that's hard to move on from.

You can find Water from my Heart HERE.
You can find the author's website HERE.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.