Amazon.com (ISBN 0849945178, Paperback)

Novelist Ted Dekker spins an action-packed story of drug cartels, the CIA, and the power of God to redeem tragedy for good in his inspirational thriller Thunder of Heaven. Life in Venezuela holds nothing but good things for Tanya Vandervan, her missionary family, and her love interest, the musclebound Shannon Ritcherson, who lives with his parents on an adjoining coffee plantation. When terrorists take over the land, both families are murdered and Tanya and Shannon believe each other to be dead. Grieving her losses, Tanya moves to the United States, where she changes her identity and seeks to lay her nightmarish past to rest. Years later, Tanya is inexorably pulled back to Venezuela by visions from God, and finds that Casius, an assassin who has his own agenda for revenge, may hold the key to questions about her past and her future. Dekker relies on a fast-paced plot rather than finely crafted prose to move his story along, and those who like their novels served up with plenty of heroics and a dash of romance will find this an engaging tale. --Cindy Crosby