Hidden Destination: A True Romanian Adventure, Escape, Revolution and Story of Compassion

by Ross Brennan

Mike Olari would have been shot! He prayed he would not be spotted in the moonlight as he swam the Danube. All he wanted was freedom to worship God. He chaffed under Romanian despotic rule, and desired to flee to a mythical land called America. This is his story. This is also the story of the Romanian people, their thirst for freedom, and their revolution. A true account of how brazen courage gripped an unarmed people, and a military dictator was toppled. This is a call for healing. Healing a land devastated by decades of a cold war, a Romania standing at the crossroads of history.

260 pages, Paperback

First published November 2, 1998

Reviews

[Neil R. Coulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hidden Destination tells two stories. One is the journey of Mike Olari, who fled communist Romania and became an American citizen; the other is the 1989 revolution in Romania that toppled Ceaușescu's reign and ended the communist rule. I read this aloud to the family as bedtime reading, and we all enjoyed it very much. We didn't know much about this period in Romania, and the stories opened up many good discussions with my kids about communism, the Cold War, oppression, and other topics.

Ross Brennan hits all of the requirements for a book of this type--the true-life Christian adventure story. As with many other such stories, I was challenged to think about how we know God's will for us, and how we find our way through daily life, work, family, and caring for the needy of the world. There are no easy answers, but throughout there is the encouragement to prayer and meditation, listening for God's direction step by step.

I wish that the book had been edited more carefully, as there are significant errors all the way through that are sometimes amusing (as in misspelling "Marx" as "Marks") and sometimes confusing. Also, it would have been good to find a way to integrate the story of Mike and the story of the revolution a little more. Once Mike reaches America, he drops out of the picture until after the revolution. However, the book does convey a sense of what it must be like to be watching from a distance as one's homeland is shattered under revolution.