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This third book in The Hidden series offers another engaging look into the lives of women fighting for their equal place in society. Bethany is a strong female character who suffers no fools and can take care of herself. She has accomplished great things and experienced brave adventures as a veteran photographer. Her new goal is to create a coffee table book and perhaps a photographic exhibition to celebrate the extraordinary things that women have accomplished throughout time. What follows is a grand adventure for the reader through time and place, highlighting many different characters living unique lives that somehow are also similar to one another.
The novel is inspired by the missing pages from the writings of Mary Magdalene. McFarlane’s characters are fictional, but the author has based her stories on the lives of real women in different eras. By giving her main character, Bethany, the goal of creating a coffee table book filled with the lives of women throughout time, McFarlane has created a clever through line with her plot. Although McFarlane takes the reader into different periods and cultures, the reader stays grounded in the story with the understanding that Bethany intends to combine all of her chapters into her project, Memory of Echoes. McFarlane introduces the reader to a host of noble women whose principal motive is to evolve in love. Bethany serves as an inspiring role model to her family, as well as to McFarlane’s readers. The overall theme of McFarlane’s novel is a celebration of the power of women, whether that be in careers, home life, or general society.