Defining hope

The rain comes down in slated sheets -- steady lines of falling water. I have put on a heavy cotton sweater to ward off the chill. It has been raining hard all day and I wonder if there will be flooding. People comment that it feels like October.

I read Alice Hoffman’s new book “Incantation” over the weekend. A book for young adults, it tells the story of a young Spanish teenager in 1500, who discovers that her family secretly practices Judaism by reading an edict issued by the government on how one can tell whether someone is secretly a Jew. In the subsequent chapters, her family is turned in by her best friend. Her grandfather is killed; her mother and brother are burned at the stake along with 50 other people.

The book jacket calls it a coming of age story, filled with hope.

I found the story and the description to be incongruent. At the same time, because the circumstances are not happy or the outcome desired, does it mean that the story is not hopeful? For what is hope, if not an emotion that overcomes difficulty?

My own sense of hope seems to be buried with uncertainty right now, but I do understand that I live a blessed life filled with a multitude of choices. And I see that we each have to make our own way, especially in the driving rain.