The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
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Some books do not need a dramatic review.
They just need you to sit there for a minute and say, “Dangit.”
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom is one of those books.
It is not an especially long book, but it is full. Faith, grief, fear, courage, forgiveness, suffering, family, loss, hope, and the kind of trust in God that makes you realize you may have been holding on to lesser things.
I do not cry easily while reading books.
This one got me.
There were moments when I had to stop and breathe because I could feel it coming up in my throat. Not because the writing was trying to manipulate my emotions, but because the story is true and heavy and holy in ways that are hard to explain.
The beginning surprised me.
Corrie is getting a new dress for the 100th anniversary celebration of her father’s watch shop. At first, I pictured her younger, maybe a girl coming into her own. Then she talks about being 45, unmarried, and looking at herself with a more critical eye than she used to.
I laughed out loud.
That little moment made her feel real to me. Not like a distant historical figure. A woman. A daughter. A sister. Someone who had hopes, disappointments, humor, opinions, and a life that did not unfold exactly the way she may have imagined.
Then the book keeps moving.
It tells about her family, her father Casper, their watch shop, their faith, and the way their home became a place of safety for Jewish people during the Holocaust. Corrie’s father especially stayed with me. His love for God and people was steady. He did not seem to measure people the way the world measures them. He saw human beings made in the image of God.
That kind of faith is not flashy.
It is lived.
The details of what happened during the Holocaust are hard to read. The fear, abuse, hunger, illness, cruelty, and loss are painful enough when you are reading them from a safe place. I cannot imagine living them. I cannot imagine the sounds, smells, sights, and terror that became daily life for Jewish people and for those who risked everything to help them.
And still, throughout this book, faith does not disappear.
Hope does not disappear and neither did forgiveness.
That is what makes The Hiding Place so powerful. Corrie ten Boom does not tell a story where faith means nothing bad happens. She tells a story where faith survives in the middle of things no human being should have to endure.
A couple of lines that stayed with me are “There are no ‘ifs’ in God’s world” and “Joy runs deeper than despair.” Those are the kind of sentences that sound simple until life tests them.
This book made me think about my own life, my own faith, and the moments I wish I had handled differently. It made me think about how God uses the pieces of our stories we do not understand at the time. It made me think about forgiveness, not as a pretty church word, but as something costly and deeply obedient.
The Hiding Place is a book I think every person should read.
Read it because it tells the truth about evil, but it also tells the truth about courage. Then read it because it shows what faith can look like when comfort is gone. Read it because Corrie ten Boom’s story still speaks, and we need stories that remind us what love, sacrifice, and forgiveness can look like when the world is at its worst.
This book wrecked me a little in the best and hardest way.
Just dangit.