Message from Forever

Rating:
Summary: Sad, Painful, Uplifting, Flawed
Review: A young Australian aborigine woman gives birth to twins somewhere in the wilderness. It is a time when the aboriginal culture is rapidly being decimated by well-meaning but oppressive whites. The little girl is shipped off to a cruel Catholic boarding school. The little boy is shuffled here and there but eventually ends up in America, with an adoptive family who treat him with unbelievable insensitivity. Ultimately he finds himself imprisoned on death row.
The struggles of the two children are portrayed with clear, lucid prose in the first half of the book, a tale of great sadness and pain. In the second half, Beatrice, the girl, runs off in search of her ancestral roots, and finds The Real People, a handful of aboriginies who still live in the bush and are trying to maintain the old ways. Unfortunately this part of the book is not believable. The characters are one-dimensional, too, too good; and their coversation consists of long speeches full of new age jargon. The language they use is totally out of character with the simple people they are supposed to be. The author describes a utopian society of people with great wisdom and psychic powers, set against the cruel, intolerant and bigoted white society.
At the conclusion of the book, brother and sister are reunited, at least make contact, and she leaves him with a document that tries to summarize all the wisdom she has learned from the Real People.
In fact, some of it is good. The author has some wisdom to share and it is indeed uplifting. But it is not written in a believable and coherent way. Does any of this really come from Australian aboriginal culture? Or is this Celestine Prophecy Down Under? Hard to say. The presentation is just too one-sided, too slanted, to be really convincing.

Rating:
Summary: A most thought provoking story that can change your thinking
Review: I came across this book accidently when on vacation and found it to so riveting that I could not put it down until finished. I have told others who would appreciate Marlo's openness to the experiences that unfolded to her. How fortunate she followed...what else could she have done! She was called!

Rating:
Summary: A gripping, moving and compelling story
Review: In so many ways Australia is a world apart. It's literally on the other side of the world. Their seasons are the opposite of ours. They speak that crazy Aussie English. But we have a lot in common too. We are both former British colonies founded mainly by people England wanted to be rid of. And when those settlers arrived in both places, they annihilated the dark skinned "savage" natives. When actual genocide had its limits, the settlers engaged in wholesale social, cultural and religious genocide in the name of "civilizing" and "Christianizing" the "savages". It's an indelible stain that both nations can never wash away.

This is the fictional account of an Aboriginal set of twins. Shortly after birth, this brother and sister were permanently robbed of the essentials that all children need to grow and thrive--loving parents, a family, personal identity, love, acceptance, and a nurturing culture and society. As a mother, I wept when I read this book. Even though this is fiction, I wept with the knowledge that what happened to Beatrice and Geoff happened to tens of thousands of Aboriginal Australians over several decades. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about others.

Rating:
Summary: TOTAL FICTION! Needs a zero star rating!
Review: The "Message" of this book is new-age nonsense not wisdom from the aboriginal people of Australia. It's an example of further exploitation and misrepresentation of native people. Save your money!