A Book Review - My Servant Caleb

A Jewish boy

A Gentile girl

A world at war

Norfolk, England, June 1936.  "Celia kicked off her jodhpur boots with a sigh of relief. She would far rather spend her days outdoors in wind and rain, with freezing hands and feet, than live the life of a salon poodle. The memory of her year in London made her shudder ...".

When Lady Celia, daughter of the Earl of Besthorpe, meets Caleb Levine, a rising young solicitor and a Jew from London's East End, their mutual attraction horrifies her freinds and scandalises her anti-semitic parents. But just as she is an exile from her class, so Caleb is in exile from both his Jewish heritage and his now Christian family. How can their relationship survive? Can two world views ever meet?

My Servant Caleb is a story that spans from 1936 to 1952 and across two continents. This wonderful story is played out against the back-drop of a world war, the holocaust and the tremulous re-birth of the nation of Israel. A Jewish boy and a Gentile girl who against all odds fall in love and  must both find their way to the Messiah of Israel. Caleb from all the traditions of his past and Celia from a world formed almost completely on class distinction and prejudice.
What I really loved about this book is that the author has managed so beautifully to portray the coming together of both Jew and Gentile into one people ... the Israel of God through this love story. The struggles that each one of us must go through as we struggle with eternal questions individually and all the shedding and leaving behind of preconceived ideas, vanities and lies until finally we meet together at the feet of our Saviour.
This book is rich in detail and calls into question the very meaning of home ....
This is truly a story that engages the heart and until you have read the last page is very hard to put down!!


Kerstin Sheldrake, is a German born in Berlin, she supports her English husband, Andrew, in the leadership of the Messianic Synagogue in Norwich, UK.

This is a book I highly recommend, I enjoyed it immensely and am a little richer for having read it!!


Blessings