The Book of Rapture by Nikki Gemmell

Or... "The Tea Pot House"

Read this book if: you want to met refections of your family, fractured, imperfect human love, and a quilt of faith inside a Tea Pot House. 

She is  scientist. 
We never discover her name, only that her three children are taken from Salt Cottage aka, Tea Pot House, and wake up in a basement. Her scientific work has put all the family in danger. To protect them, she must let a family friend kidnap them.  Her and husband Motl drew love colored brightly on the hearts of everyone of their children. Now they must  place faith in the lessons they taught in the Tea Pot House when family was thick, safe and sure.  

"Now is the time when what you believe is put to the test."  


Let me tell you about my Tea Pot House...

 Matt and I meet each other inside the Tea Pot house, when at first it was merely a humid greenhouse with wild lawns.
We walk together to the backyard assessing its 'ownability'.

"It needs a lot of work..." 
"See the vision, Tab. See the vision."
"Hmmm.... or see how much work needs to be done."
"There is always that choice."
I look around at the meandering grass weaving its roots together with the weeds and wearing the leaf matter like an overcoat.
"You think we could make something of this place?" 
"No. I know we could make something of this place. It is little boy heaven..."
I think of our young sons. "Or Tarzan's heaven."
"It isn't anything that can't be mowed-" He looks back at the house, "or painted."
Then he snickers despite himself. I join him. The snickering turns to giggles and the giggles to hooting laughter. 

Because here's the thing about Tea Pot Houses- they have potential to brew a family to many happy moments within their walls. Sure, this one is begging for a face lift, tummy tuck and all out surgery, no holds barred. No amount of painting or mowing would produce a roof over the back deck, or sand and seal the front one. It won't turn three small bedrooms into room for four and maybe more. The bathroom would not be painted into newness. The tub needed ripping out and the tiles were already helping themselves to freedom by lifting in places they never had permission to lift... but we could see ourselves here. 

 A Tea Pot House is spice waiting to be added. And Matt and I know enough about imperfect human love  and family to add the spice.

So we bought it.

I thought of my boys when I read these words in The Book of Rapture and that's when I knew we had made the right decision. We had found our Tea Pot House. 

"Molt and you wormed that fat little teapot of a house into all their hearts. You both dreaded a blunting when wonder would not cradle them, but it never came, for the two of you pulled happiness around them like a wondrous cape." ( pg.23)

And that is what Matt and I intend to do in this Tea Pot House. Sometimes to protect a family, to brew a family, you have to let it go, release the worry, and just believe.  

Book Rating: 7/10.  Books written in the second person are still growing on me, but the words were every bit a 'wondrous cape.'


What about you? Do you live in a Tea Pot House? 


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