Maggie Rose is the second novel in the Daughters of Jacob Kane series by Christian fiction author Sharlene MacLaren. Published in 2009, the story is set in 1904 and follows Maggie Rose Kane, the spirited twenty-year-old middle daughter of Jacob Kane, as she answers God’s call to leave her hometown of Sandy Shores, Michigan, and serve as a "house mother" at Sheltering Arms Refuge, an orphanage in New York City.At the refuge, Maggie Rose cares for displaced and orphaned children—known as "Street Arabs"—and helps place them with families across the United States. Her faith and compassion are tested when she meets Luke Madison, a cynical newspaper reporter assigned to investigate the plight of homeless children. Despite their growing attraction, Maggie struggles to remain focused on God’s plan, especially as Luke grapples with personal loss and a strained relationship with faith.
Len and his father, Son, couldn’t be more different. If Len is a recently divorced man of 42 who just wants sex, then his old man is a World War Two veteran in his late 80s, who is impossible. Len is a decadent subeditor at a South African newspaper, the old man is an old-school puritan. They have nothing in common, except that they’re both storytellers. Len thinks he’s heard all the stories before, but then one day – hungover as usual – he decides to tease a narrative out of the old man. He wants to see if there is more to the endlessly repetitive good-time stories. And slowly the old man starts revealing how just one small, shocking incident actually affected him (and his family) for the rest of his days. The horror of a past war is brought to a head in a country where 50 people – whether children, women or the aged – are murdered not a year, month or week, but a day.
