A Sequel, For What Gain?

Not every book grabs an audience as “The Same Kind of Difference as Me” did. It is a beautiful love story between a woman and God, between a woman and a man and the unlikely love of friendship between two very different men.

The temptation, when a book takes the reading audience by storm, is to write a sequel. For Ron Hall, a salesman by talent and experience, that temptation was too great to resist.
His sequel “What Difference do it Make?” is on the store shelves but I could wish the book had remained unwritten.

I do not mean to minimize the accounts of people whose lives were impacted and changed by Debbie’s story . They are inspiring to read. Nor do I minimize Denver’s childlike faith and wisdom that breaks through on the pages.

What bothered me about the book was the fact that a large part of the book is about Ron Hall working through his relationship with his father and that not in an insightful way. I was rather embarrassed for him. While he realizes that forgiveness needed to be extended to his father for being less than the father he would have wished for, never throughout the book did Ron convince me that his faith in God is deep or even real. And because of that, the book did not fall into pleasant places, and I put it down keenly disappointed.