This book is in my personal Top Three List of books that I think every teen girl and woman MUST read.

In a very brief description it is about a young mixed-blood Jewish woman who becomes engaged to the most wonderful man imaginable. There is just one problem: she only knows him through his letters. In the Jewish tradition she becomes engaged and must wait for the coming of he who through his letters demonstrates that he knows her like no other and loves her beyond her capacity to understand. But as time goes by she begins to grow weary of waiting. Temptation presents itself with all of its age old irresistibility, and an internal war is waged for her purity, her passion and her heart. She emotionally survives the ordeal, although not unscathed, and at the moment she least expects it is united with the one who loves her better than she could ever love herself.

Although this story is a very clear allegory of the Christian as we each wait for the joining with our Beloved Christ, it is also an incredible love story. As I think about the book and how it impacted me, I can only seem to use superlatives to describe it: incredible, awesome, touching, inspiring, life-changing. This book affected me as a young teen on many different levels: the allegorical setting allowed me to have a clearer understanding of God's Love; although not preachy in the least, the message of the importance of sexual purity reached me at one of the most important times of my life. After the Bible I would say that it was the MOST important and impacting book that I read in high school. I hope that others will be as touched by it as I was ... and still am!