In The Hands of A Woman

by Rachel Howard

146 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1992

About the author

Rachel Howard's debut novel, The Risk of Us, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt April 2019. She is also the author of a memoir, The Lost Night, and her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in ZYZZYVA, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Coast, the New Yorker online, and the New York Times. She lives in Nevada City, California.

Reviews

[Mike Hernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rachel Howard was married to an elder in the church of Christ. The book is composed of a personal and classroom study series and then the material was organized into a book; so there’s some overlap from chapter to chapter. It is not especially well written. It is easy to read but little attention was given to transition statements and you get the sense from time to time your just reading a bunch of information dumping. Nevertheless, one can easily get past this.

Overall I recommend the book for its practical applications to the role of a Christian woman which is largely lost today. Her arguments are biblically based in God’s creation order and many scriptures are used. It is refreshing to read these godly virtues from a Christian woman’s perspective especially in our current cultural climate.

The book was written in 1968 but I gather that the material was somewhat earlier developed. It was interesting to read about concerns of the woman’s role as a homemaker after the influences that resulted after WWII. She mentions a survey which revealed data at the time that 20% of women with children 17 years and under were in the workforce. I recently did some research and in 2021 a similar survey was conducted which revealed that 71% of women with children under 18 are in the American workforce!

All in all I recommend the book especially for women who desire to live the Christian life themselves and wish to be an example to the younger which is another focus of the book.

FYI- the book is 156 pages and she is not the same author who is mentioned in the “more about the author”. I’ve sent a note to correct.

[Jodie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book goes against our culture and what most men and women, even in the church, believe, but I agree with most, if not all, that it says. It was recommended as a a book every Christian woman should read, so I read it. Because the church has been so influenced by feminism and the modern culture, I fear most would not read it with an open mind but would stop before they even begin.