My name is Alice Ringwald, but the man who kidnapped me says that’s a lie.
Last year, Ted Dekker began the Outlaw Chronicles, a series of young adult novels, with Eyes Wide Open. This year, we will see the release of Water Walker, and Hacker. These three novels are separate, but yet are tied together by one character: Stephen– or Outlaw– one of the main characters from Dekker’s novel Outlaw.
Water Walker is the tale of Alice Ringwald, a special thirteen year-old girl who knows nothing of her life except for the past six months she spent with the couple who adopted her. She is kidnapped by a man who claims that her birthmother has been looking for her for years, and then takes her to the swamplands of Louisiana.
And so begins a tale of fear and hurt, and overcoming that fear and forgiving those who hurt you.
Many of Dekker’s readers have been yearning for him to return to his old style, that of his breakout novels Thr3e and Showdown. They will graciously accept this new offering and find that Dekker has not lost is touch as some have believed. I, for one, have liked what he likes to call his “New York Novels”, such as The Bride Collector and The Priest’s Graveyard. They have impacted me in many ways. But the return to the deep spiritual stories that grab you is welcomed.
Water Walker may be young adult, but it in no way lets up on the intensity that has always been found in a Dekker book. It is fast-paced and, at times, disturbing. Not in the gory kind of way, but in how the minds of some of the characters work, and what they think they have to do to please God.
This book will change the way many readers think about forgiving those who have done things to us that we don’t think we can forgive them for. If this is a sign of what is to come in Dekker’s other releases this year, Hacker and AD 30, I cannot wait to read them.
Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are mine.
Evan W.S. Morgan 