Connilyn Cossette’s Splendor of the Land is definitely one of my favorite books from 2025! Beyond the literary genius, her story resonated on a deeply personal level and challenged me to reconsider how I view parts of my own life. It left me saying, “Wow. What a story!”
Splendor of the Land is biblical times fiction, which I always think is interesting to read. Instead of following well-known biblical characters, Cossette wrote a story about the Kenites. For part of their story, see 1 Samuel 15. When Saul ordered them to move away from the Amalekites before he declared war on them, the story gets merely a few lines in Hebrew. But the actual story involved so much more. Entire families were uprooted. Careers put on hold. The fear and uncertainty must have been awful.
Cossette takes the reader on a delightful, although fanciful, story about a master Kenite goldsmith who is slowly going blind and has no son to inherit his business and the carefully guarded secrets of his success. He turns to Zahava, his third born daughter who was crippled after a childhood sickness, and teaches her in secret.
But no one can know that a woman is the real master craftsman.
Zahava’s future is uncertain. She can’t openly practice her craft, as that would be extremely improper, but no one wants to marry a crippled woman. She feels horribly stuck, with no hope of a happy future.
The plot-twist is one of the best I’ve read in a long time! But even as life changes for Zahava in ways she never could have imagined, the thing that stuck with me the most was the exploration of the heart of a father.
It’s easy to write about fathers who are disengaged, constantly angry, or who caused the pain the child spends the entire story trying to heal from. Current culture does not want to celebrate godly fatherhood.
When a book refuses to tell a story about subpar fatherhood, but shows fathers who love deeply with their actions and not merely their words, it stands out. Cossette could have easily written about fathers from a perspective of hurt, but she wrote about earthly fathers who reflected the forgiveness, compassion, everlasting love, and tender mercy of their Heavenly Father.
It was truly a breath of literary fresh air that was not only beautiful to read about, but also challenged how I view fathers, both in real life and in the books I read. She elevated my view of family and reestablished a godly standard for fatherhood.