Chris Stewart

So all of my life I have been a bookworm. My parents would come into my room on schoolnights {typically around 12 or 12:30} to find me wrapped up in a new book, with bloodshot eyes reading by flashlight and tell me to go to sleep. I read everything in my sights. Even still, walking through a bookstore is comparable to tweedle dee in a candy store. The idea of taking in how other people feel about this in the world, or being immersed in a world they created is amazing. Given all of this, picking favorite author was extremely difficult! But one series that have read kept coming into my mind.
By no means arenthey works of literary genius, or shocking, or anything along those lines but the Great and the Terrible series by Chris Stewart honestly changed my life.
It is very heavily based in beliefs of the LDS faith, which sometimes detracts from the appeal of books to me, but this was a wonderful exception. The first book begins in the premortal existence with a family and their experience in the war in heaven. This is obviously not doctrine, but is still very spiritual and increased my testimony. The rest of the series follows this "family" through the earth life, based in modern times and very heavily centered around the war in the middle east.
While I am still quite uninformed about issues in the middle east this book opened my mind up to the people in that area, and I believe this book was a great influence on my decision to become a middle eastern studies major.
Chris Stewart just painted everything so vividly and kindly that it truly opened my heart to things that it was previously closed to. Any book that can make such a deep impact is something special, and I absolutely loved it.

-Ashley.