Peace Like a River

Christian fiction is a literary genre that draws on Christian theology, portrays a Christian worldview through its subject matter and characters, and deals with Christian themes and morality. While examples of such literature date back centuries—consider Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy—the genre in its current form has adapted to align with modern literary trends and audiences. Genre conventions of Christian fiction typically include promoting Christian values, teaching a moral lesson, ending with good prevailing over evil, and observing a traditional Christian moral code in relation to matters of sexuality and language.

Prominent authors of Christian fiction in the 20th century included J. R. R. Tolkien, Madeleine L’Engle, and C. S. Lewis. Contemporary authors further popularized the genre by combining Christian theology with aspects of romance or thriller genres. Francine Rivers, author of Redeeming Love and The Last Sin, began publishing bestselling novels in this genre in the 1990s, and contemporary Christian romance author Karen Kingsbury has sold over 25 million volumes. Marilynne Robinson, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Gilead, is a contemporary author of literary fiction who often addresses Christian themes in her works and publishes nonfiction writing on her faith.

The title for Peace Like a River was inspired by lyrics from “It Is Well with My Soul,” a Christian hymn written by Horatio Spafford to convey the peace he experienced in the face of devastating grief at the loss of his children. The novel’s main characters, the Land family, have a Christian worldview and learn moral lessons within the narrative arc. In the end, good prevails over evil as God rewards the Lands’ faith with miracles. Even the tragic circumstance of Jeremiah’s death is allayed by his joy as he goes to meet God in heaven. The supernatural events in Peace Like a River are viewed as defying the laws of nature and are framed as miracles performed by God.