David C. Cook Fiction

Win all of our Summer 2010 books!

2010-07-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Now that you've seen all of our Summer 2010 books, here's a chance to win them! Enter to win using this form. Entries must be received by midnight MST August 31, 2010. Good luck to all who enter!

Healer, By Linda Windsor (Chapter One)

The Mailbox, By Marybeth Whalen (Chapter One)

Claim, By Lisa T Bergren (Chapter One)

Priceless, By Tom Davis (Chapter One)

Solitary, By Travis Thrasher (Chapters One and Two)

2010-07-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

This week's featured book is Solitary, by Travis Thrasher.

Be sure to enter the weekly contest to win a free copy of the book, using the form located here. All entries must be received by midnight MST Tuesday, July 20.

Scroll down for author-created playlists, plus a "behind the book" feature from Travis Thrasher!

Solitary, By Travis Thrasher (Chapters One and Two)

Three Recommended Playlists

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Solitary Playlist #1 : For the walkman
1. “Oscillate Wildly” by The Smiths
2. “Leave in Silence” by Depeche Mode
3. “Watch Me Bleed” by Tears For Fears
4. “Someone Somewhere in Summertime” by Simple Minds
5. “Invisible Sun” by The Police
6. “Oomingmak” by Cocteau Twins
7. “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” by The Smiths
8. “Thieves Like Us (Instrumental version)” by New Order
9. “Just One Kiss” by The Cure
10. “Souvenir” by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark
11. “But Not Tonight” by Depeche Mode
12. “Musette and Drums” by Cocteau Twins
13. “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” by The Smiths

Solitary Playlist #2 : For the iPod
1. “Black Mirror” by Arcade Fire
2. “Losing Touch” by The Killers
3. “Houses” by Great Northern
4. “Come Alive” by Foo Fighters
5. “Ghosts” by Ladytron
6. “Until the Night Is Over” by M83
7. “Hearts on Fire” by Cut Copy
8. “Theft, and Wandering Around Lost” by Cocteau Twins
9. “Highway of Endless Dreams” by M83
10. “If You Were Here” by Cary Brothers
11. “Wait for Me” by Moby
12. “Beautiful” by Ruth Ann
13. “Strangers In The Wind” by Cut Copy
14. “2-1” by Imogen Heap
15. “Alice” by Cocteau Twins

Solitary Playlist #3 : For the movie
1. “Be a Good Boy” by Thomas Newman (from the Little Children soundtrack)
2. “Twin Peaks Theme” by Angelo Badalamenti
3. “Eli and Oscar” by Johan Söderqvist (from the Let the Right One In soundtrack)
4. “Any Other Name” by Thomas Newman (from the American Beauty soundtrack)
5. “Oscar In Love” by Johan Söderqvist (from the Let The Right One In soundtrack)
6. “Cool at Heart” by Tangerine Dream (from the Melrose album)
7. “Bruise” by Thomas Newman (from the Flesh and Bone soundtrack)
8. “Town of Austere” by Alexander Malter (from the Fireflies In the Garden soundtrack)
9. “The First Goodbye” by David Helpling and Jon Jenkins (from the Treasure album)
10. “Night Life in Twin Peaks” by Angelo Badalamenti (from the Twin Peaks soundtrack)
11. “Be with You” by James Newton Howard (from The Happening soundtrack)
12. “Leaving Hope” by Nine Inch Nails (from Still album)
13. “The Letter That Never Came” by Thomas Newman (from Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events soundtrack)

Behind the Book: Some Kind of Wonderful

2010-07-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I’m a novelist is because of John Hughes. The director of eighties classics like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Sixteen Candles inspired my love of both film and storytelling. It wasn’t just that he captured moments of the era I grew up in; it was that he captured the soul of a teenager.

Three movies stand out to me: The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Some Kind of Wonderful.

As someone who attended four different high schools, I felt like I had four completely different high school experiences. I had different personas for each of the schools I went to. At times I was a jock, a rebel, an outcast, or part of the popular clique. All along I saw myself in John Hughes’s films. The agony of being a teen, the thrill of falling in love, the angst of saying good-bye, and the utter hilarity of being a teenager.

The music and mood of these films helped define my teenage years. My life could have been a John Hughes film. I wanted to be Blane from Pretty in Pink, but really I was Duckie. I spent my fair share of time in detention, yet I wasn’t as cool nor did I have one-liners like John Bender. I was always falling in love and making cassette tapes based on that love. I was that kid with the giant posters of musical groups plastered all over his bedroom walls.

John Hughes died on August 6, 2009, when I was still writing Solitary. I had already pitched this series as part Pretty in Pink and part scary movie. I wanted to detail some of my high school experiences with these books.

I believe the first eighteen years of a person’s life define the remaining ones. I was such a naïve kid when I was in high school, but that’s the beauty of that time. I didn’t know the big, bad world, and in ways, I was fortunate for it.

When I look back at those John Hughes films, there’s a certainly amount of naïveté about them. But there’s also a lot of heart. That’s what teen movies lack today: that passionate, beating heart.

This series is a nod to those years, and to one of the men who helped shape them.

2010-07-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

This week's featured book is Priceless, by Tom Davis.

Be sure to enter the weekly contest to win a free copy of the book, using the form at the bottom of the page! All entries must be received by midnight MST Tuesday, July 13.

Scroll down for discussion questions, plus the author's answers to the discussion questions!

Priceless, By Tom Davis (Chapter One)

Tom Davis' Answers to the Discussion Questions

2010-07-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

1. What sorts of emotions did you experience while reading Priceless?

Many, many emotions, and they were all over the map. This is not the easiest type of book to read (or in my case, write). Don’t get me wrong, books like Priceless must be written and read. It’s not acceptable to say that issues like sex trafficking are too painful, so I should just avoid them. I can assure you it’s much more painful for the girls who are trafficked.

That said, the research was difficult. Quite often, I would have to put books down after reading a few pages. The brutality of this industry is worse than anything you can imagine. Most things I discovered couldn’t even be written in a Christian book.

Pain and heartache stand out as the emotions I felt most. Those emotions then turned into anger, hopefully a righteous anger, which motivated me to do something to make a difference. You can too by the way. (Visit www.SheIsPriceless.com for more details.) I’ve been to Russia almost fifty times and have heard so many stories about what happens to kids when they get out of orphanages. Of course Marina’s story is one of the worst, but it happens to thousands and thousands of children every year. This is an outrage and our voices need be heard on this issue.

As I write this, I’m one month away from taking a trip to Russia and Moldova to visit some of these beautiful girls who have been rescued. The same emotions apply when I sit down with girls like Marina with the addition of one feeling: hope. Hope didn’t exist in the lives of girls caught in this industry; but because someone cared and helped be a part of their freedom, hope has become a reality.

2. What surprised you most about the story? About the characters?

Some of these characters are kids I know, or once knew, so I try to put myself in their situations. What would I do if I were booted out of the only home I knew at fifteen to face a cruel world? How would I respond to a kind lady who offered me a job making more money than I could ever imagine? The answers to those questions drove the book. You and I would make many of the same decisions these characters did.

What surprised me most about the story? Sensing God’s broken heart for these scenes as they passed each page and understanding that redemption is found no matter how deep the pit. It seemed like I was always asking the question, “How does God feel about this?”

3. Stuart decides early on to help Katya with her mission. What was your initial reaction to this decision? Why would this have been an easy decision for Stuart? Why might it have been difficult? What is our responsibility when we encounter evil in the world?

Well, if you knew Katya in person, you’d help with her mission too. She’s quite compelling! Katya’s character is taken from a real person who happens to be the national director for Children’s HopeChest in Russia. In fact, if you go to the book’s Web site, www.SheIsPriceless.com, you’ll find a video interview with Katya.

Stuart is me, in a sense. In fact, he’s everyone who has a heart to rescue the oppressed and see the captive set free. I don’t know that he could have made any other decision. What was he going to do? Let those girls go back to be tortured and abused when he had the power to rescue them? No way. Not me, not Stuart. This is more than being a cavalier, John Wayne type of character in a story. It’s what the kingdom of God is all about. When we have the power to do good or overcome evil and refuse, we’ve missed the point of following Jesus.

There’s a quote that’s had a huge impact on me regarding this issue, as well as issues of apathy that creep up in the lives of Christians: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” —Edmund Burke To me, that says it all.

4. In what ways were the characters of Father Alexander and Sister Irina symbols in this story? What did they represent in the spiritual realm?

There’s a definite play on the idea of the sacred and the profane throughout the book. One reason is because it can be the sad reality of life. We all live in this tension, and we have to choose how to overcome evil with good. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are making those choices by what we do or don’t do. From a spiritual perspective, it is the cosmic battle between good and evil. I’m a firm believer in this as was C. S. Lewis, who said, “Every square inch of this cosmos is at every moment claimed by Satan and counter-claimed by God.”

There is a battle going on that we can’t see with our physical eyes. It’s a battle for the souls of men, the innocence of little girls who come out of orphanages, for millions of people to have adequate food and water and for God’s people to rise up and engage themselves in the world and their communities. Those evil forces are responsible for turning men into the animals they become. They are also the same evil forces that keep us apathetic toward others who suffer. I think this is clearly expressed in Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. In this allegory of spiritual realities, the Devil is briefing his demon nephew Wormwood on tempting people. The Devil tells him the objective is not to make people wicked but to make them indifferent. He says, “I the devil will always see to it that there are bad people. Your job, my dear Wormwood, is to provide me with people who do not care.”

5. Why (or how) is Sister Irina essentially “protected” against the evil of the bad men in this story?

Sister Irina is “untouchable.” This is playing on a physical and spiritual reality. Mr. M represents a very powerful man on earth who utilizes his power to see that nobody harms the Sister, lest serious repercussions come screaming down on their head. But this is also a spiritual reality. God takes care of His own. He provides serious heavenly protection to his sons and daughters who do the work of His kingdom on earth. Evil can scare us, tempt us, and lead us astray, but Jesus came to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). This issue of sexual slavery is certainly a work of the Devil, and it can be destroyed. That’s why God sent His Son. But it takes the people of God understanding this truth, believing it, and implementing it.

6. Who or what was the nameless woman who kept appearing to Stuart, beginning with the conversation on the street after he meets with Sergei and Ivan? What is her purpose in the story?

This wraithlike figure represents evil itself. She’s in the background pulling the strings so to speak, influencing the hearts of people and causing calamity everywhere she goes. She showed up in the worst of scenes intentionally. It was my way of bringing this cosmic battle to life. Of course none of us know exactly how this works, but we do have some indications in Scripture of the reality of the battle. Daniel 10 and Ephesians 6 provide good examples.

Stuart is the force of light in these scenes. Whether he knows it or not, because of who Christ is in him, he has more power than the forces of evil. By stepping out for justice and through prayer and faith, Stuart can make a difference and defeat these powers of wickedness. This is why it’s so important in the book that he keeps moving, keeps invading the enemy’s territory. Stuart understands this truth: “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). This is our hope.

7. What is your reaction to the subterfuge Stuart had to participate in to free the girls? Is this a case of “the end justifies the means”? Explain.

No doubt. This is how it works in real life many times. The people who actually rescue girls from the sex industry are constantly going undercover. This is a corrupt, seedy business. You have to fight fire with fire so to speak. Some people would disagree with this, but a legitimate response is for them to get out on the front lines and stop talking about it. These issues put a burr in my saddle. The people who complain and criticize the most do so from the comfort of their living rooms. That’s just not right. “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.” —Bodie Thoene

8. What horrified you most about Marina’s plight? In what ways does her escape from the slave trade inspire you? In what way does her story inspire you to take action?

This is a difficult issue for me to swallow, period. When I think about the horror and injustice of it all, it’s overwhelming. This is certainly an area where I wish God would intervene and put an end to the sex trade once and for all. Some things we will never know this side of eternity. But we must fight evil in every place we find it. I feel like David in the Psalms when he says, “How long, O God, will the adversary revile, and the enemy spurn Your name forever? Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand? From within Your bosom, destroy them!” (Psalm 74:10–11).

Marina’s escape inspires me because when a girl like her is rescued, she is brought from death to life. It’s a true resurrection story. As far as the kingdom of God is concerned, this is extremely important business. It’s at the core of what Jesus said He came to do in Isaiah 61:1–2: “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.” This is our privilege as sons and daughters of the Most High God. We get to do this! There isn’t anything we could give our lives to that would matter more.

9. What roles does art play in the story?

In this story art represents the beauty inside of each and every child. Children have incredible talents and abilities. They are capable of doing amazing things like painting, writing, or becoming a great leader. It doesn’t matter if they are an orphan locked away in some rat hole of an orphanage or a little girl kidnapped and forced to be a sex slave. God created each child with purpose. He knew them before they were born, He knitted them in their mothers’ wombs, He loves and cares for them; they are His sons and daughters, just like you and I.

I think this is important to understand because many people look at orphans as the trash of society, cursed, or good for nothing except to be thieves or prostitutes. These are common views orphans face when they get out of an orphanage. This is a lie the enemy spreads in the minds of people, because it furthers his ability to subject them to cruelty and torture. The truth is that God loves them and has created them to be special. They just need help. This is why James says, “Pure and undefiled religion is caring for widows and orphans in their distress” (see James 1:27).

10. Why do you think Father Alexander related so closely with the icon and character of St. George the Dragonslayer? Based on what the novel reveals about St. George, how might Father Alexander have misread St. George’s story?

Father Alexander didn’t misread the story of St. George; he perverted it. This is what men and women do who follow darkness. They take something beautiful and pure, like the human body, and they twist and pervert it. He saw the story of St. George and was inspired by it like anyone should be. What could be more courageous than a hero on a horse rescuing a damsel in distress and killing the dragon who enslaves her? There’s something inside each one of us that longs to see that happen. We were created to be people who stand in the gap for the innocent who are suffering and rescue them.

I’m thoroughly convinced that if every person who followed Christ would intervene in situations of injustice and do something to change the life of one person, we would solve the biggest problems that plague our world. Children wouldn’t starve to death every day due to malnutrition, people wouldn’t die from drinking dirty water, there would be no orphans because they would all be adopted into Christian homes, and there would be no children in the sex-trade industry.

11. We don’t get to see Whitney’s reaction to Stuart’s dangerous adventure. How might she have responded to his decisions?

Stuart purposely kept the reality of the situation from Whitney. This wasn’t deception on his part; it was protection. If she knew what was really going on, the anxiety would have driven her crazy. Stuart is in a real dilemma at this juncture in his life. On one hand he wants to go home, live in a perfect world, and love on his wife and child. But he’s not in a perfect world. His eyes have been opened to something, and he can’t just sit around and pretend like these injustices don’t exist.

For me, Stuart is a combination of what we all want to be: courageous and filled with faith. He knows he can’t rescue these girls by himself. He needs God’s power and protection over his life to make anything happen. But his faith is fueled because he knows how important these children are to God. God longs for them to be rescued, and Stuart knows that God will help in this process—he’s not alone.

12. Vlad is portrayed as a man with a shady past, a past that is not that different from the men he ends up fighting against. What turned him away from the dark side? What does this tell us about God’s transformative power?

This is the story of redemption. “All of us like sheep have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6). Vlad has done some things in his life that would make most of us cringe, but even in that state, God loves him and desires to see him repent and be set free. There is even hope for Father Alexander if he would ask for it.

I think this is what makes Vlad such a warm character. What makes him so likable is the fact that he’s been to the dark places, he’s seen the other side, and it didn’t satisfy him. He recognized the lie he was caught in and chose something different. He’s one of my favorites!

Discussion Questions for "Priceless"

2010-07-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Use these questions to spark discussion in your reading group. Want to know the author’s thoughts on these questions? Check the other blog posts here.

1. What sorts of emotions did you experience while reading Priceless?

2. What surprised you most about the story? About the characters?

3. Stuart decides early on to help Katya with her mission. What was your initial reaction to this decision? Why would this have been an easy decision for Stuart? Why might it have been difficult? What is our responsibility when we encounter evil in the world?

4. In what ways were the characters of Father Alexander and Sister Irina symbols in this story? What did they represent in the spiritual realm?

5. Why (or how) is Sister Irina essentially “protected” against the evil of the bad men in this story?

6. Who or what was the nameless woman who kept appearing to Stuart, beginning with the conversation on the street after he meets with Sergei and Ivan? What is her purpose in the story?

7. What is your reaction to the subterfuge Stuart had to participate in to free the girls? Is this a case of “the end justifies the means”? Explain.

8. What horrified you most about Marina’s plight? In what ways does her escape from the slave trade inspire you? In what way does her story inspire you to take action?

9. What roles does art play in the story?

10. Why do you think Father Alexander related so closely with the icon and character of St. George the Dragonslayer? Based on what the novel reveals about St. George, how might Father Alexander have misread St. George’s story?

11. We don’t get to see Whitney’s reaction to Stuart’s dangerous adventure. How might she have responded to his decisions?

12. Vlad is portrayed as a man with a shady past, a past that is not that different from the men he ends up fighting against. What turned him away from the dark side? What does this tell us about God’s transformative power?

Hurry!

2010-06-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day to enter "The Perfect Summer Read" contest! You have until midnight MST - good luck to all who enter!

Use the form at the very bottom of the page, or click here to enter! The grand prize includes:

Beach bag
Beach towel
Stainless steel water bottle
Red flip-flops
Flip-flop key chain
Framed picture of the "Kindred Spirit" mailbox
Copies of: Healer, by Linda Windsor, The Mailbox, by Marybeth Whalen, Priceless, by Tom Davis, and Claim, by Lisa T. Bergren.

2010-06-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Mailbox, By Marybeth Whalen (Chapter One)
Take a look at this week's featured book:
The Mailbox, by Marybeth Whalen!

Scroll down for a chat with the author, as well as discussion questions for the book. Also, be sure to enter the weekly contest for a chance to win this book, and to also be entered to win our GRAND PRIZE for the month of June!

Enter the contest here.

Thanks to all who entered last week - the winner has already been notified. Keep entering!

An Interview with Marybeth Whalen

2010-06-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

Q: How much of this novel is actually true?

A: The assumption is that a first novel is going to be autobiographical, but in this case it’s not true. While there might be brief references within the novel to things that happened to me or feelings I have had—especially as a mom, friend, wife, etc.—the overall story and situation is completely made up. But the setting … that’s entirely true. There really is a Sunset Beach, North Carolina, and it’s my most favorite place in the world. So it makes sense that I would set my first novel there. I have been visiting the mailbox for years and believe that it is a special place. A place where, as the photographer Lindsey meets says in the book, God hears you better.

Another true aspect about the novel is that I did first visit Sunset Beach, like Lindsey, at fifteen years old in 1985 (telling my age). I have very vivid memories of that trip to this day, which is how I was able to recall the details, the music, etc., of that time. In the acknowledgments, I thanked an old friend of mine, Holly, who took me with her on that trip. I also named the character of Holly after her as a little tribute. She couldn’t have known then that that trip sparked a lifelong love of Sunset Beach for me. When we left that year, I vowed I would come back when I was a grown-up. And I do go back every summer. I also named the characters of Uncle Bob, Aunt Frances, and cousins Bobby and Stephanie after my real aunt, uncle, and cousins, as it is their beach house we stay in every summer. That was my way of giving them a little shout-out.

Q: So the mailbox is real? Do you know who the Kindred Spirit is?

A: Yes, the mailbox is real, but I don’t know who the Kindred Spirit is. No one does. That’s part of the mystery and folklore of the mailbox. If you are ever in North Carolina, I highly recommend a visit.

Q: You have said that the book changed quite a bit from the original to the version we see. How so?

A: In the original, there was a letter to the Kindred Spirit for every year from 1985 to 2004. My editor didn’t feel we needed a letter for every year—that the letters were slowing down the flow of the story, which was true. So we left a few in so that the reader would know that Lindsey was writing letters every year, but not get mired down in every detail of every year as I originally planned. I think we have a happy medium now, a better mix between narrative and the glimpses into Lindsey’s past via the letters.

Also, in the original, Holly died. That seems so weird now because she became so much a part of the story, helping Lindsey process what’s happening to her like good friends do. The story of Holly’s death was told through the letters, so when we pulled those out, we had to figure out what that did to the storyline. I ended up adding her back and I am so glad I did! Oh, and in the very first manuscript, Lindsey’s name was Lucy, but I quickly discerned that she was so not a Lucy. Lindsey suits her much better!

Q: Did you experience a powerful summer romance like Lindsey and Campbell’s that you drew from for this story?

A: No. I had a few summer romances, but none that were enduring like you see in this story. Regardless of whether we’ve had a great summer love, I think it’s a notion that resonates with all women: this idea that we are unforgettable, that we are worth pursuing at all costs. God puts that in our hearts because ultimately He is the great Pursuer, the One who never forgets us. I liked that in this story, Lindsey discovers that about Him first, then finds it in Campbell. She was never forgotten. None of us are.

Q: You deal with a tough subject in this book: a Christian woman in the midst of a divorce and rebuilding her life. What made you decide to focus on this?

A: Honestly, it’s just how the story came to me. I didn’t really think about the aspect of her being divorced until I was well into the first draft and a friend of mine had pretty much the exact same thing happen to her that was happening to Lindsey. What was so interesting is that I went back and read what I had written from Lindsey’s point of view and it was nearly verbatim what I heard my friend saying. I knew then I was on the right track of tapping into the feelings and emotions of what Lindsey was going through in a way that would ring true. We have had so many friends go through this; I know there are women everywhere facing what Lindsey faced. And I often think, But by the grace of God, go I.

Q: You dedicated this book to a friend, Ariel Allison Lawhon, saying that this book wouldn’t exist without her. Why is that?

A: For most of my life I have had story ideas pop into my head. I would see something happen and think, What if …? So when I met Ariel, I was chewing on this idea for The Mailbox, and had been for some time. At that point she was trying to find a publisher for her novel, eye of the god, and she really encouraged me to try writing fiction. I was so nervous about it—I didn’t know if I had the stick-to-itiveness to actually finish a novel. With her continued encouragement, I kept putting words down—though I knew next to nothing about what I was doing. Finally I got about sixty thousand words in and quit. I had written myself into a corner and couldn’t get out. So I closed that file and moved on to other projects. A few months later I received this random email from Ariel encouraging me not to quit and begging me to just finish it. She said, “No one writes sixty thousand words and quits. You have to finish this book.” So I did. If she hadn’t persisted, I am convinced the book would still be sitting in a forgotten file with sixty thousand words written. So that (and her continued friendship and listening to my rambling on a daily basis) earns her a dedication for this book. I also dedicated it to my husband, who puts up with a whole lot when I am writing and deserves a dedication too!

Q: Now that you have written one novel, do you think you will write more novels?

A: Yes, I plan to write more novels. I keep a running list of ideas and add to it often, so I hope that list will keep me going for quite some time. I am working on a new novel that comes out next year and is totally different from The Mailbox. One thing I have learned through this experience is, I will always have more to learn about the craft of writing. I will continue to learn for the rest of my career as a novelist, and my hope is my work will reflect what I am learning with each successive book. That’s the plan at least.

Discussion Questions for :The Mailbox"

2010-06-21T08:49:00.000-07:00

1. Lindsey is recently divorced. If you have been through a divorce and have kids, do you sympathize with her feelings as a newly single mom? If not, did seeing her character struggle affect how you view divorced women?

2. Lindsey struggles with her role as a mom, especially in light of the new dynamic of her family and her daughter’s transformation into a preteen. Campbell struggles with staying connected to his daughter from a distance. They each make efforts to connect with their children. Why do their efforts work or not work? Are they doing all they can as parents? Why is God’s grace so important to both of them?

3. At the beginning of the story, Campbell discovers his daughter has passed out at work. His mind goes down paths of worry even though he tries not to be irrational. Have you ever experienced that happening? How did you control your tendency to worry?

4. Lindsey’s daughter, Anna, says to her, “If Dad loves me like you say, he wouldn’t hurt me like this. I don’t think that he really loves any of us. I think that he loves himself and doing what he wants is all that matters now. But that’s not what real love is. If he loved me, he wouldn’t make me feel this bad. ’Cause when you love someone, you care about how they feel too.” Why is this true of Grant, and what does it say about his character?

5. What are some of the things Lindsey learns to appreciate about her new life as a single mom while she is at the beach? How do these little realizations affect her perspective and influence her
actions?

6. Ellie shocks Campbell by telling him that he can take Nikki with him to Sunset Beach. Why does she allow him to? Is Campbell prepared to be a father to a teenage girl with issues? Does he think he is? Does Ellie?

7. Both Holly and Grant’s mother, Jane, encourage Lindsey to move on with her life. Do you think that encouragement has something to do with Lindsey’s decision to take Minerva up on her offer to walk by Campbell’s house? If you were Lindsey, would you have done what Minerva suggested?

8. Running is a great outlet for Lindsey. How does it help her heal? Is there a physical activity or hobby that helps you like that? If not, are you inspired to find one?

9. All Lindsey wanted her whole life was a hands-on, involved mom. How do you think that lack affects her mothering?

10. Lindsey and Campbell leave the crowded restaurant and end up at the pier. Why do you think they both agreed to do that?

11. The photographer Lindsey meets at the mailbox plays a role in both her and Campbell’s lives. Do you believe God puts people in our lives to accomplish His purposes? Have you ever had an encounter that could have been orchestrated only by God?

12. What do the red shoes symbolize to Campbell? What does it mean to him when Nikki decides to wear the flip-flops he buys her?

13. How would you describe Campbell’s journey as a father? As a child of God?

14. How would you describe Lindsey’s spiritual journey? What does she learn about herself by the end of the book?

15. Would you have been able to trust Campbell after you found the letters? Would you have been able to forgive him? Why does Lindsey?

16. Why does Lindsey make Grant leave? Was she right to do so? Did he deserve a second chance? Why, or why not?

17. Holly prays for Lindsey to see Grant and Campbell for who they really are. Was her prayer answered?

18. What do you think happens between Lindsey and her mom after the wedding? Was Lindsey right to stay and deal with her situation with Grant and Campbell, or should she have gone to her mother’s bedside?

19. Forgiveness and second chances are big themes in this story. The saying goes that unforgiveness is like eating poison while waiting for the other person to die. To whom do you need to ask forgiveness and a second chance? To whom do you need to offer your forgiveness?

20. Do you know who the Kindred Spirit is whom we see in the beginning and ending of the book? At what point in the story did you figure out her identity?

2010-06-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this week's featured book:
Claim, by Lisa T. Bergren!

Enter the contest here.

Thanks to all who entered last week - the winner has already been notified. Keep entering!

A Chat with Lisa T. Bergren

2010-06-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

Q: How did it feel to wrap up this series?

A: Very gratifying. These characters have gone through so much, I was eager to see them through to a sense of peace. I got all teary with Nic and Moira in several scenes, which is always a good thing. If I’m moved, hopefully my readers will be too. But then, these days, I cry during commercials and Extreme Home Makeover. I swear that by the time I’m sixty, I’ll just have to be tucking a handkerchief in my bra like my granny used to.…

Q: Odessa and Bryce really take a backseat in this novel. Why did you not write more about them?

A: In my first draft, they actually had a stronger presence in the first third of the book. But their scenes felt flat against all that was happening for Moira and Nic. I decided that in my mind, they were really on a good track now—that the focus really had to be on getting my two prodigals back home. And I think there was more than enough to take in between those two troublemakers, don’t you? Odessa and Bryce are present—just more of the “supporting cast members” at this point. And Odessa became my personification of “home” for both Nic and Moira, so I thought it appropriate that she was a bit more in the background.…

Q: What motivated you to write about prodigals?

A: I think we’re all prodigals, in some fashion. After college, I had my own prodigal experience, during which I was actually bartending on Sundays instead of doing anything that my God would be proud of. I grew deeply depressed, had a come-to-Jesus experience, and left for the Holy Land. Literally. I went from bartending to Jerusalem, to visit my cousin who was studying the life journeys of Paul. After a few weeks in Israel and Egypt, I returned home—physically and spiritually. And went to work in an industry that had helped call me home— Christian music and books.

Q: What’s next for you?

A: I’m about to dive into a teen time-travel series, which will take me back to a time period I love—medieval Italy. Or perhaps Renaissance Italy. I haven’t quite decided on the year. But I was moved by the passion I saw among teen girls reading the Twilight series, and since I have a teen and tween, I wanted to write something for them. I long for them to read about heroines they can emulate—and heroes that would die trying to save them (not battling against the desire to take their lives as the vampire heroes do in Twilight). So this River of Time series is my attempt to cover those bases.

Q: What about on the home front?

A: We’re currently considering a year away as a family. We’re passionate about travel and after I finish the River of Time series, I’m scheduled to begin a series based on characters taking the Grand Tour of Europe. We’re wondering if we should take our own Grand Tour … we’ll see! Lots of unanswered questions on that front, but we’re leaning pretty hard in that direction. It’s exciting to dream about, even if it never comes to fruition.

Q: Anything else you want to say to readers? Where can they find out more about you?

A: The best places are my Web sites: www.LisaTawnBergren.com and www.TheWorldIsCalling.com. I really appreciate my readers and love to hear from them. They can email me at Lisa@bergrencreativegroup.com. I also have eNewsletters on both sites that people can subscribe to, that will give you the lowdown each month. Lastly, I’m on Facebook and Twitter as @LisaTBergren and @TheWorldCalls. Connect with me via any of those portals—I’ll look forward to it!

Discussion Questions for "Claim"

2010-06-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

1. It takes Nic a long time to come around to God’s way of thinking. What do you think were the most important factors for him?

2. Moira suffers from scars, outward and inward. Which do you think are worse? Why?

3. Moira and Nic are both drawn to their old ways and places where they once found comfort. Have you ever done the same? Discuss why we’re drawn to our old ways, even if we know a
new way is better.

4. How were Moira and Nic’s “prodigal stories” different? And how were they the same?

5. Wealth comes and goes in this series. Both prodigals (Nic and Moira) spend all they inherit, then gain it back in two very different (and sometimes excruciating!) ways. Discuss this factor in their lives—and how it impacts you in your life too.

6. What do you think was the pivotal change moment for Nic?

7. What is it about Sabine that helps Nic get over the threshold to happiness and love?

8. What role did Everett play in doing the same?

9. What was the most moving scene in this book for you? Why?

10. Do you believe that God is calling each of us “home”? What does that look like? Is it internal or external?

2010-06-08T00:03:00.000-07:00

This week's featured book is Healer, by Linda Windsor.

Scroll down for a glossary of Arthurian characters, as well as an "About the Author" feature. Also, be sure to enter the weekly contest, for a chance to win this book, and to also be entered to win our GRAND PRIZE for the month of June!

Enter the contest here.

Arthurian Characters

2010-06-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

Most scholars agree that Arthur, Guinevere, and Merlin were titles shared by various personas throughout the late fifth and sixth centuries. These are the late sixth-century characters. Because of inconsistent dating, multiple persons sharing the same titles and/or names, and place names as well as texts recorded in at least six languages, I again quote Nenius: “I’ve made a heap of all I could find.”

* historically documented individuals

*Arthur—Prince of Dalraida, Dux Bellorum (Duke of War) or Pendragon/High King of Britain, although he held no land of his own. He is a king of landed kings, their battle leader. A Pendragon at this time can have no kingdom of his own to avoid conflict of interest. Hence, Gwenhyfar is rightful queen of her lands, Prince Arthur’s through marriage. Arthur is the historic son of Aedan of Dalraida/Scotland, descended from royal Irish of the Davidic blood- line preserved by the marriage of Zedekiah’s daughter Tamar to the Milesian king of Ireland Eoghan in 587 BC. Ironically the Milesians are descended from the bloodline of Zarah, the “Red Hand” twin of Pharez (David and Jesus’ ancestor) in the book of Genesis. Thus the breach of Judah prophesied in Isaiah was mended by this marriage of very distant cousins.

*Aedan of Dalraida—Arthur’s father, Aedan, was Pendragon of Britain for a short time and prince of Manau Gododdin by his mother’s Pictish blood (like Arthur was prince of Dalraida because of his marriage to Gwenhyfar). When Aedan’s father, the king ofDalraida, died, Aedan became king of the more powerful kingdom, and he abandoned Manau Gododdin. For that abandonment, he is oft referred to as Uther Pendragon, uther meaning “the terrible.” He sent his son Arthur to take his place as Pendragon and Manau’s protector.

Angus—the Lance of Lothian. Although this Dalraida Arthur had no Lancelot as his predecessor did, Angus is the appointed king of Stirlingshire and protector of his Pictish Queen Gwenhyfar and her land of Strighlagh. Like his ancestral namesake Lancelot, his land of Berwick in Lothian now belongs to Cennalot, who is defeated by Arthur. (See Cennalot and Brude.) Angus is Arthur’s head of artillery. It is thought he was raised at the Grail Castle and was about ten or so years younger than his lady Gwenhyfar. Scholar/researcher Norma Lorre Goodrich suggests he may have been a fraternal twin to Modred or Metcault. In that case it would explain Lance not knowing who he really was until he came of age, as women who bore twins were usually executed. The second child was thought to be spawn of the Devil. Naturally Morgause would have hidden the twins’ birth by casting one out, only to have him rescued by her sister, the Lady of the Lake, or Vivianne Del Acqs. This scenario happened as well in many of the saints’ lives, such as St. Kentigern. Their mothers were condemned to death for consorting with the Devil and begetting a second child. Yet miraculously these women lived and the cast-off child became a saint.

*Brude/Bridei—see Cennalot/Cennalath/Lot of Lothian.

*Cennalot/Cennalath/Lot of Lothian—Arthur’s uncle by marriage to Morgause. This king of eastern Pictland and the Orkneys was all that stood between his Pictish cousin Brude reigning over all of Pictland. Was it coincidence that Arthur, whose younger brother, Gairtnat, married Brude’s daughter and became king of the Picts at Brude’s death, decided to take out this Cennalot while Brude looked the other way? Add that to the fact that Cennalot was rubbing elbows with the Saxons and looking greedily at Manau Gododdin, and it was just a matter of time before either Brude or Arthur got rid of him.

*Dupric, Bishop of Llandalf—wants to start a monastery on land where Brother Martin lives (a historical bishop who may also be Merlin Emrys per Norma Goodrich).

Gawain—son of Cennalot/Cennalath and Morgause, brother to Modred/Metcault, and cousin to Arthur; Arthur’s right-hand man on the battlefield and much older than Angus/Lancelot.

*Gwendoleu—kingdom between Strathclyde and Rheged invaded by Riderch of Alclyd/Strathclyde.

Gwenhyfar/Guinevere—High Queen of Britain. This particular Gwen’s Pictish name is Anora. She is of apostolic line and a high priestess in the Celtic Church. She is buried in Fife. Her marriage brought under Arthur the lands of Stirlingshire, or Strighlagh. Her offspring are its heirs, as the Pictish rule is inherited from the mother’s side. There were two abductions of the Gwenhyfars. In one she was rescued. In the other she slept, meaning she died (allegedly from snakebite), precipitating the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. Both in Gwenhyfar’s abduction and in that of Sleeping Beauty, thorns surrounded the castle, thorns being as common a defense in those days as moats were. Also note the similarities of names, even if the definitions are different—Anora (grace), Aurora (dawn).

*Merlin Emrys of Powys—a Christian druidic-educated bishop of the Celtic Church, protoscientist, advisor to the king, prophet after the Old Testament prophets, and possibly a Grail King or Joseph. Emrys is of the Irish Davidic/Romano-British bloodline as son of Ambrosius Aurelius and uncle to Aedan, Arthur’s father. Merlin Emrys retired as advisor during Arthur’s later reign, per- haps to pursue his beloved science or perhaps as the Grail King. In either case he would not have condoned Arthur’s leaning toward the Roman Church’s agenda. Later the Roman Church and Irish Celtic Church priests would convert the Saxons to Christianity, but the British Celtic Church suffered too much at pagan hands to offer the good news to their pagan invaders. (See Dupric, Myrddyn, and Ninian.)

*Myrddyn (also known as Merlin Sylvester or Merlin Wilt, meaning “wild”)—a pagan druidic bard of Gwendoleu, often confused with Arthur’s Merlin. (See Merlin Emrys of Powys.)

*Riderch Haol of Alcut or Alclyd in Strathclyde—historic Coeling king. His relationship with Arthur, Urien, and the other kings of the North was tenuous. Arthur punished him for invading Gwendoleu to avenge his ambitious brother’s death. Yet he rode later on with Arthur, his father, Aedan of Dalraida, Urien, Gwendoleu, the deposed Morcant Bulc of Bryneich (now Saxon Bernicia), and others against the Picts and Saxons in the Battle of Camlan.

*Vivianne Del Acqs—sister to Ygerna and Morgause of Lothian, she is Arthur’s aunt and Lady of the Lake. Vivianne is a high priest- ess and tutor at the Grail Castle. It’s thought that she raised both Gwenhyfar and Angus/Lance of Lothian, all direct descendants of the Arimathean priestly lines.

*Ygerna—Arthur’s mother and a direct descendant of Joseph of Arimathea, was matched as a widow of a British duke and High Queen of the Celtic Church to Aedan of Dalraida by Merlin Emrys to produce an heir with both royal and priestly bloodlines. It is thought her castle was at Caerlaverock.

About the Author: Linda Windsor

2010-06-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

With an estimated million books in print, Linda Windsor is an award-winning author of sixteen secular historical and contemporary romances and thirteen romantic comedies and historical fiction for the inspirational market. Her switch to inspirational fiction in 1999 was more like Jonah going to Ninevah than a flash of enlightenment. Linda claims God pushed her, kicking and screaming all the way. In retrospect the author can see how God prepared her for His writing in her early publishing years and then claimed not just her music but also her writing when she was ready. At that point He brushed away all her reservations regarding inspirational fiction, and she took the leap of faith. Windsor has never looked back.

While all of Linda’s inspirational novels have been recognized with awards and rave reviews in both the ABA and CBA markets, she is most blessed by the 2002 Christy finalist award for Riona and the numerous National Readers Choice Awards for Best Inspirational that her historicals and contemporaries have won. Riona actually astonished everyone when it won against the worldly competition in the RWA Laurel Wreath’s Best Foreign Historical Category.
To Linda’s delight, Maire, Book One of the Fires of Gleannmara Irish Celtic series, was rereleased by Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers with a gorgeous new warrior queen cover in 2009.

Christy finalist Riona will be rereleased with its heroine on an all- new cover in summer 2010. Another of her novels, For Pete’s Sake, Book Two in the Piper Cove Chronicles, is winner of the 2009 National Reader’s Choice Award—Best Inspirational, the Golden Quill Award—Best Inspirational, the Best Book of 2008 Award—Inspirational (Long & Short Reviews), and Best Book of the Year—Inspirational (Romance Reviews Today). For Pete’s Sake also finaled in the Colorado RWA 2009 Award of Excellence and the Southern Magic RWA Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence.

Linda’s research for the early Celtic Gleannmara series resulted in a personal mission dear to her heart: to provide Christians with an effective witness to reach their New Age and unbelieving family and friends. Her goal continues with Healer of The Brides of Alba series, which reveals early church history, much of which has been lost or neglected due to intentional and/or inadvertent error by its chroniclers. This knowledge of early church history enabled Linda to reach her daughter, who became involved in Wicca after being stalked and assaulted in college and blaming the God of her childhood faith—a witness that continues to others at medieval fair signings or wherever these books take Windsor.

Windsor is convinced that, had her daughter known the struggle and witness of the early Christians beyond the apostles’ time and before Christianity earned a black name in the Crusades and Inquisition, she could not have been swayed from her early faith. Nor would Linda herself have been lured away from her faith in Christ in college by a liberal agenda.

Linda’s testimony that Christ is her Druid (Master/Teacher) opens wary hearts wounded by harsh Christian condemnation. Through her witness, admitted Wiccans and pagans have become intrigued by the tidbits of history and tradition pointing to the how and why druids accepted Him. She not only sells these non-believers copies of her books, but she also outsells the occult titles surrounding her inspirational ones.

When Linda isn’t writing in the restored eighteenth-century home that she and her late husband restored, she’s busy speaking and/or playing music for writing workshops, faith seminars, libraries, and civic and church groups. She and her husband were professional musicians and singers in their country and old rock-and-roll band, Homespun. She also plays organ for her little country church in the wildwood. Presently she’s trying to work in some painting, wallpa- pering, and other house projects that are begging to be done. That is, when she’s not Red-Hatting or, better yet, playing mom-mom to her grandchildren—her favorite role in life.

Visit Linda Windsor at her Web site: www.LindaWindsor.com

The Perfect Summer Read!

2010-06-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

We have a special contest up for the month of June! Each week, use the new form (at the very bottom of the page, or click here) to enter to win the weekly featured book, PLUS be entered to win the grand prize at the end of the month! The grand prize includes:

Beach bag
Beach towel
Stainless steel water bottle
Red flip-flops
Flip-flop key chain
Framed picture of the "Kindred Spirit" mailbox
Copies of: Healer, by Linda Windsor, The Mailbox, by Marybeth Whalen, Priceless, by Tom Davis, and Claim, by Lisa T. Bergren.

Good luck to all who enter!

2010-04-27T14:24:00.001-07:00

This week we're featuring Sing, by Lisa T. Bergren. Make sure to scroll down for an interview with the author, and discussion questions for the book.

Enter to win a free book by filling out the form on the right, or leaving a comment below. All entries must be received by May 2nd, midnight MST. Good luck!

An Interview with Lisa T. Bergren

2010-04-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

Q. This is mainly Moira’s book, but you also focused on Odessa’s growth and relationship in this novel. Why’d you think that was important?

A. Moira seems to steal every scene she’s in (Nic too!). But I wanted to show how Odessa, now physically healthy, still has some emotional growth ahead of her—like we all do. We’re all continually evolving, learning, changing.

Q. Is that why you were so tough on these characters in this book?

A. I think it’s easy to be a Christian when things are good. You show what your faith is made of—and possibly discover new depths—when you encounter the bad. Or you walk away. I was glad to see these three getting closer to God, but Nic obviously has a ways to go.

Q. You talk about the characters as if they have minds of their own.

A. [Laughing.] They do! That’s the fun of fiction. I have one idea, but then a certain spin occurs and casts them in a different direction, and I discover new things with them as if I’m riding along, observing. I always start with a rough outline, knowing some key things that will happen, and the ending I’d like to see, but I leave it to the characters to take it from there. When I’m invested in the scene, feeling it as if I’m in their skin, sensing their emotions and mind-set, the plot often turns.

Q. Why the title?

A. We often sing contemporary songs at church that make me think—phrases like “I will sing in the troubled times” and “praise You in the storm”—a pretty big challenge for most people. But learning how to do that makes the good, easy times even sweeter, and the rough times somehow bearable. It’s so important that we all find that deep assurance that God is with us, regardless of what is happening in our lives, good or bad. And when we do, the only proper response is to sing praises in His name. There’s a reason that heaven will be full of singing. They already understand what we’re still trying to get, down here.

Q. We’re in 1880s Colorado. It surprised me when we got to the conquistador gold—what inspired that?

A. The third novel I ever wrote was a romance called Treasure, in which the heroine was seeking Spanish gold as a nautical archaeologist. I think if I’d had half the chance, I would’ve loved the opportunity to be a treasure hunter myself. Indiana Jones and all that, you know. Childhood fantasies. So I always note treasure-ish things I come across, and I read about an actual legend of lost conquistador explorers, who left behind a bounty of gold when they got separated from the rest of their troops in the Sangre de Cristos. Reportedly, two lost hikers came across the cave in a snowstorm twenty years ago, marked it when the storm ended, intending to come back, but could never find it again. They spent years of weekends searching for that cave. Isn’t that fantastic novel fodder? Love stuff like that.

Q. What can we expect in Claim, the third book in this series?

A. Resolution is always nice, though I don’t like things tied up in perfect little bows. Life isn’t like that. But I’m striving to leave my readers satisfied and hopeful, right along with the St. Clairs. I think love is the key for all three. That’s all I’m telling ya. You’ll have to read the big conclusion for yourself.

Discussion Questions for "Sing"

2010-04-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

1. Do you think that God answers our pleas at times with thoughts we don’t recognize as guidance? Why, or why not? Have you experienced this?

2. Consider how you might have felt toward Reid, were you a character in this novel? Is it ever right or justified to wish pain, or even death, upon another? Why, or why not?

3. Scripture encourages us to sing God’s praise, every day, regardless of circumstance. Do you think we must praise Him, even when things are bad? Why or why not? How do you tend to
react when faced by adversity?

4. What lessons do you feel Odessa and Bryce were learning in their marriage?

5. Have you experienced division in your marriage? Have you ever thought you were on the brink of separation or divorce? If so, what brought you back together?

6. What should someone do when faced with the temptations Odessa and Robert faced? Do you feel it was right or wrong for Odessa not to tell her husband of his brother’s advances? Why?

7. All three siblings are seeking something. What do you think each one really is hungering for?

8. Manuel told Nic of his need for God—has anyone ever done the same with you? What was that like? And if not, how would you respond if someone spoke so plainly to you about your faith?

9. Moira imagines her mother in the room with her, time and time again. Why is that? Who do you think her mother represents?

10. Why do you think Moira fell in love with Gavin? What impact will her scars have on her future?

2010-04-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

We're featuring Heading Home, by Renee Riva, on the blog this week! Make sure to enter with the form on the right by Thursday, April 22nd at midnight MST.

Fifty Pets You (Hope) To Meet in Heaven

2010-04-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

Here are fifty pets that author Renee Riva hopes to meet in Heaven - which pets do you want to see again in Heaven?

Childhood:
Tinkerbelle, the cat
A gazillion pollywogs
Goldie the goldfish, who died on Easter and did not rise, as I prayed
during Easter Mass
Bony and Claude, the turtles
Chumley, the collie-shepherd (aka Sailor’s mascot)
Luigi, the other collie-shepherd
Mouse rescued from Dorie’s cat, who lived in my tree fort in a Tarzan
lunch pail
Abigail, the albino hamster living in secret in my closet
Pugsly, the hamster I had Dorie give me for my birthday
Moonie, my Clydesdale draft horse
Maynard, the cat who had five kittens (who we thought was a boy
till then)
Rudy, the hamster who I ran away with because my mom said he had
to live in the garage
Stray kitten found on our family trip to Hawaii
After leaving home:
The Kid, rescue dog from visiting the dog pound
Sandy, rescue dog from visiting the dog pound
Loser, rescue cat from visiting the pound
Alfie, rescue dog from visiting the dog pound
Birdie, rescue dog from visiting the dog pound
Misha, the mouse
Peanut Butter, the hamster
Jelly, the hamster
Teddy Bear, the hamster
On the farm:
Peach, the half-blind chicken
Butterscotch, the friendly chicken
Elvis, the banty chicken
Mr. and Mrs. White (ducks)
Mama, banty hen who raised a dozen turkey babies
Millie, the cat
Max, the cat
Twig, the stray cat found in a tree
Fred, the cat
Bear, the Great White Pyrenees
Jesse, the other Great White Pyrenees
Curley, the cow
Duke, the horse
Bargain, the rat
Kitty, the stray
Bailey, the abandoned chow with five puppies
Max, pound puppy
Baby Bear, the European black bear hamster
Tiny Tim, the itty-bitty baby dwarf hamster
Frosty, the Chinese dwarf hamster with the one-hundred-seventyfive-
dollar vet bill
Buster, the baby turtle

The Real Enemy, by Kathy Herman

2010-04-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

We're giving away another book on Kindle! For the next week, click here to be able to get The Real Enemy, by Kathy Herman, absolutely free on your Kindle. Enjoy!

2010-03-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

Scroll down for discussion questions for The Right Call, by Kathy Herman.

Fill out the form on the right, or leave a comment, to enter for a chance to win a free copy of this week's featured book! Entries must be received by midnight MST, March 21st.

Discussion Questions for "The Right Call"

2010-03-15T15:57:00.000-07:00

1. In your own words, explain what you think 2 Peter 2:19b means: “A man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.” Stedman’s gambling and Trent’s smoking were strongholds that were easy to spot, but would you have thought of Richard’s and Ralph’s stubborn pride as something that they had become slaves to? Have you ever been involved in or been the victim of an ongoing feud that greatly affected your life? Was it satisfactorily resolved or is it still in progress? Were there deep wounds to be dealt with? Did you feel led to intervene? If so, was that a difficult position to be in?

2. As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers. What is the difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker? Which role do you think is easier? Which of the two best describes Ethan’s role in his uncles’ feud? Had you been in Ethan’s place, what would you have done differently?

3. Do you think addictions are sins or sicknesses—or is it possible to make a distinction between the two? If a person is trapped in the cycle of addiction, should that person be absolved from taking responsibility for his or her actions? Did Stedman know right from wrong? Was he capable of choosing better? Why do you think he didn’t? If a person came to you with an addiction problem, what advice would you give him or her?

4. Do you think Stedman became addicted to gambling merely because he had a weakness for gambling, or were there other factors that might have contributed to his gambling obsession? How do you think a person becomes addicted to something? Do you think there might be fewer addiction problems if more people turned to God and allowed Him to fill their emptiness instead of depending on something else? If emptiness is the culprit that leads us down the path to addiction, how can we fill up with the right things? What are the right things?

5. Are you now or have you ever been guilty of any other excesses, such as overeating, overworking, overspending—overindulgence of any kind? Do you find that the longer you allow the bad habit to go unchecked, the harder it is to get back on track? Do you think this is true merely because it’s hard to break a bad habit—or is there something about trying to stop by sheer willpower that intensifies the battle? In your experience, how effective has it been for you to try to control the excesses in your life in your own strength?

6. Can you name some activities in our modern world that have become addictive for many people (for example, surfing the web, shopping online, texting)? Do you think that many loving and charitable actions are pushed aside because of such “web” addictions? If everyone cut one hour a week from these self-absorbing activities and did something nice for someone else, do you think it would dramatically affect our world?

7. Why do you think humans tend to do things in excess? It is said that self-control is a virtue, but true self-control is part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. How capable do you think we are of controlling our carnal nature? Does that ability seem affected by how much we want something? For example, some of us can stay away from potato chips but can’t stop eating chocolate until it’s all gone. Others can say no to chocolate but can’t stop eating potato chips until the entire bag has been devoured. When we say we “can’t stop,” what do you think we’re really saying? Why is it so hard to say no to our appetites? What do you have a weakness for? At what point should a weakness be considered sinful? Is there anything we truly “can’t stop” doing?

8. Are children slaves to the flesh or is the behavior learned? Is it ever too early to teach our children to practice selfcontrol? Why do you think self-control is something we must practice? Did you like Ethan’s advice to Emily on how to quit eavesdropping (chapter 39), or would you have given her different advice? Would Ethan’s advice apply to any number of bad habits?

9. Do you think living in a culture of instant gratification has made us almost oblivious to what we are or aren’t dependent on? Is it possible that we think we’re totally dependent on God, when the truth is we’re not being denied anything, so our dependence isn’t being tested? Is there any food, object, or activity that if it were taken from you would leave you feeling empty? Be honest.

10. How inclined do you think we would be to engage in excess if we took seriously 1 Corinthians 6:20, which says, “You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body”? Are there areas of your life that don’t measure up to this admonition?

11. If you could meet one of the characters, who would it be? What would you say to him or her? Was there an idea, thought, or principle you took away from this story?

2010-03-08T15:33:00.000-08:00

We have another free book on Amazon this week! Get the Kindle version of Saving Sailor, by Renee Riva, here. Enjoy your free book - we'll be back with another contest next week!

2010-03-01T15:31:00.000-08:00

We're doing things a little differently this week!

Instead of giving away hard copies of the book to a few winners, we're giving everyone the chance to read As Young As We Feel, by Melody Carlson, for free! Simply click here to download the Kindle version of the book, which is free on Amazon this week only. Thank you for your continued support of fiction from David C. Cook - enjoy your free book!

Discussion Questions for "As Young As We Feel"

2010-03-01T15:04:00.000-08:00

1. What qualities of childhood friendships can’t be duplicated in adult friendships? In what ways are the bonds of childhood stronger? Weaker?

2. If you were reunited with a close childhood friend, would you be friends today? How might your experience be similar to or different from the Four Lindas?

3. Abby, Marley, Caroline, and Janie all face a critical period of discouragement and disappointment, but for different reasons. What do they have in common that allows them to have empathy for their differences?

4. How did Cathy’s death affect the way each of the Four Lindas thought about this season of life?

5. Abby and Janie both grapple with depression of varying degrees. Using their stories, discuss whether you think depression can be avoided or whether it is at times inevitable—perhaps even helpful. What, if anything, could Abby and Janie have done to get through to the other side of their depression with less collateral damage to themselves and the people they love?

6. Caroline has an adventurous spirit, a forgiving and gracious heart, and a can-do attitude in spite of the suffering she has experienced. Do you attribute these qualities to personality, to conscious effort, or to something else? Can anyone develop such a perspective on life, or only certain people?

7. What kept Marley from working on her art while she lived in Seattle? In what ways were these obstacles legitimate? In what ways were they excuses that protected Marley from pain or fear?

8. How could Janie feel jealousy toward Caroline and Victor while still grappling with grief over her husband’s death?

9. “You can’t go home again,” the saying goes. What kinds of risks are Marley, Janie, and Caroline taking by moving back to Clifden after so many years away? What are the potential rewards?

10. Which of the Four Lindas do you most closely identify with? What about her choices do you find surprising? Disappointing? What would you have done similarly or different if you were in
her shoes?

2010-02-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

Hello fiction fans! This week, SheReads.org is offering a FREE download of Scared, by Tom Davis. Click here for the article. We'll have another contest up on Monday. Until then, enjoy your free book!

2010-02-08T12:18:00.000-08:00

This week we're giving you a preview of an upcoming book: Chosen, by Ginger Garrett, releasing March 1, 2010 (you can pre-order here or here). Leave a comment or use the form at the right to enter for a chance to win a FREE copy of Chosen, by Ginger Garrett. All entries must be received by February 22, 2010.

Scroll down for a Q&A with Ginger Garrett, and an author bio!

Q&A with Ginger Garrett

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Q: Why did you include Chosen: The Lost Diaries of Queen Esther in the David C. Cook series Lost Loves of the Bible?

A: I chose these diaries for the Lost Loves series because of the potential for love that Esther lost.

The moment Esther was chosen for the harem, whatever hopes she had for her future, her heart, and her family were lost. She became one wife among thousands. She lost freedom and many days, she lost her dignity in the treatment she received.

However, Esther is foreshadowing the story of Christ, who tells us that to surrender our own desires and plans will lead to blessings unimaginable, and overflow goodness into the lives of others. Esther’s loss, and her submission to a cruel turn of events, resulted in the saving of a nation. Millions of Jews were saved throughout history by her sacrifices.

Q: What are the other books in the Lost Loves series?

A: I’ll be adding two novels: the stories of Jezebel and Delilah. Both women have been sorely overlooked by history, painted as cardboard villains without any understanding of who they were and why they acted as they did. Their stories are more poignant, and disturbing, than what we’ve ever imagined.

Q: Will you ever complete the Serpent Moon series?

A: Since I get this question every day on email from readers, I thought I’d answer it here, too!

Dark Hour began what was to be a trilogy of evil women from the Bible. However, due to circumstances well beyond my control, I had to stop work on the series, while certain events sorted themselves out.

While I won’t be returning to the trilogy, I will be returning to my desire to tell the stories of two epic women from biblical history: Jezebel and Delilah. Their stories, their passions, and the loves they lost compel me to finish the work.

It’s fitting, really, that these women be allowed to tell their tales without the stigma of being in a series about evil women of the Bible. Until we get past that label, and see their hearts, we can’t begin to understand the lessons they would whisper to us across the generations that separate us.

About the Author

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Ginger Garrett

Ginger Garrett is the author of the Chronicles of the Scribes series (In the Shadow of Lions, In the Arms of Immortals, In the Eyes of Eternity), Dark Hour, and Beauty Secrets of the Bible. Chosen: The Lost Diaries of Queen Esther was recognized as one of the top five novels of 2006 by the ECPA.

Focusing on ancient women’s history, Ginger creates novels and nonfiction resources that explore the lives of historical women. A frequent media guest and television host, Ginger has been interviewed by Fox News, Billy Graham’s The Hour of Decision, The Harvest Show, 104.7 The Fish Atlanta, and many other outlets.

A graduate of Southern Methodist University with a degree in theater, she is passionate about creating art from history.

2010-02-01T15:37:00.000-08:00

Leave a comment or use the form at the right to enter for a chance to win a FREE copy of Screen Play, by Chris Coppernoll. All entries must be received by February 8, 2010.

Scroll down for an interview with the author, plus a chance to help Chris decide on his next sequel!

An Interview with Chris Coppernoll

2010-02-01T15:28:00.000-08:00

An Interview with Chris Coppernoll

In Screen Play, Harper and Luke get to know each other long distance through the online dating site, LoveSetMatch.com, text messaging, and emails. In the spirit of Screen Play, best-selling author Christa Parrish (Home Another Way, Watch Over Me) and Chris Coppernoll dialogued with one another through email on the themes, message, and meaning found in Screen Play.

CP: Screen Play is your third work of fiction. Why is this novel so important to you?

CC: Screen Play is important because it comprises all the themes that inhabit my novels: isolation, singleness, sudden and unexpected fame, and God’s mysterious hand working on our behalf. I like this story. I love how Harper’s this beautiful, young woman who, at the time she finds herself crossing the line from her twenties to her thirties, goes through a bewildering series of circumstances that leave her friendless in Chicago. Her acting roles have dried up. Her best friend, Avril, is gone, and her boyfriend, Sam, abandons her for his new life without her in Los Angeles. The story basically opens with Harper emerging from an unsettling year alone. An acquaintance we never meet in the story, Bella, has invited Harper to a mission outreach church in the city, and she’s given her life to “the Rescuer.” In God’s perfect timing, Harper’s phone finally rings, and she’s invited to join the cast of a Broadway revival in New York. For me, that could be the entire story, but I wanted to tell a story about how quickly God can change our circumstances, and everything can change for the good.

CP: Chris, did you find it difficult to write Screen Play from a woman’s perspective? What were some of the challenges? Some of the surprises?

CC: Yes. The biggest surprise was that I did it. :-) I think Screen Play had to be written from Harper’s viewpoint because we need to hear her tell the story. I wanted readers to sit on those hard subway seats and feel the emotions Harper feels at the Carney Theatre and everywhere else her journey takes her. Harper is one of the most complex characters I’ve ever written. Writing in her voice was the most challenging part of the novel and the decision I questioned most (because it was a stretch), but it was the truest way to tell the story. I think God gives most novelists an affinity for understanding people, the way an attentive actor watches someone famous and then imitates their character on screen. I worried about whether readers could accept Harper’s voice, knowing it came from a man, or if they’d be distracted. I had to trust that readers could be swept up in the story and it wouldn’t be an issue.

CP: At one point, Harper writes to Luke, “It’s part of bigger story God’s telling in my life. Sometimes I feel as much a spectator as a participant.” Why did you choose to write that? Do you ever feel this way?

CC: Sometimes life feels just that way. We say, “What will be will be,” or “If it’s meant to happen, it will happen.” Writing Screen Play occurred at the same time I was experiencing changes in my personal life that felt God-orchestrated, like God was involving me directly in His plans. Some of my personal experiences influenced Harper’s story because there’s a parallel.

CP: Harper remembers the loss in James’s life and thinks, “I wondered if he felt like God had suddenly realized He’d dealt him too many blessing cards and decided to take one back.” What would you say to someone who also felt this way when his or her life has been touched by pain?

CC: It’s easy to write pat answers when life deals a difficult blow, but all of us go through challenging times. I’ll simply tell you what my experience has been. Everything painful in my life has come from one of three sources: someone’s sin against me; the consequence of my own sinful choices; or God’s providential decision to change me through trying circumstances. Whatever life challenges we face, God can reveal the goodness inside when we turn to Him.

CP: “It struck me how in a city the size of New York, those I was getting to know best I was connecting with through a computer screen,” Harper thinks. How do you see technology playing a role in the fellowship of believers? Are you ever concerned it can be a replacement for true community?

CC: As icky as the two words sound when used together, community and technology can work together. I’m thinking of the Twitter community—a Web site that allows people you’ve selected from anywhere in the world to exchange their brief thoughts online––and how friends where I live in Nashville were recently able to mobilize hundreds of believers to pray for someone in an emergency. Social networking sites like Facebook work like a small-town newspaper. They provide only the news our community chooses to post whether they are the community next door or a community far from home.

CP: In Screen Play, we see the ups and downs of trying to find “the one,” from Harper’s relationship with Luke to Avril’s relationship with Jon. As someone involved in singles’ ministry, what advice would you give to the millions of people navigating the world as single people but desiring to have a partner in life?

CC: Wait upon the Lord. Should God have someone for you, He will make it clear to the both of you.

Which Character Would You Like to See in a Sequel?

2010-02-01T15:18:00.000-08:00

Which Character Would You Like to See in a Sequel ?

Readers often tell me when they’ve enjoyed one of my characters. Sometimes they say they’ve enjoyed them so much, they’d like to see that character return in a sequel. Have you ever felt that way? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts. Take a look at the list below of some of the most popular characters from my first three novels. Send me your favorite pick for a sequel at chris@providencebook.com, and who knows? Your vote may just lead to an all-new story! I look forward to hearing from you.

Providence

Jack Clayton
Jenny Cameron
Erin Taylor
Peter Brenner
Arthur Reed

A Beautiful Fall

Emma Madison
Noel Conner
Michael Evans
Janette Kerr
Christina Herry

Screen Play

Harper Gray
Avril LaCorria
Helen Payne
Ben Hughes
Luke McCafferty

2009-11-03T16:02:00.000-08:00

Enter the contest (via the form on the right) for a chance to win a free copy! All entries must be received by Monday, November 9th.

Scroll down for a great interview with Mike Mason!

An Interview with Mike Mason

2009-11-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

Where did you get your inspiration for The Blue Umbrella?

I live at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill, a couple of blocks down, is the real Porter’s Store. A few years ago I awoke in the middle of the night to a flash of insight. I recalled that when I was a little boy, many years ago and many miles away, I also lived at the top of a hill and at the bottom was an old store. How interesting! With this strange convergence of my present and past lives, the whole geography of a children’s fantasy novel flowed into my mind. I could set the story right in my own neighborhood! But it would really be the neighborhood of my childhood, which is the deepest source of all writerly inspiration.

There was also a third old store, Foster’s, which I knew as a young man living in a small prairie town. Old Mr. Foster was always talking about the weather and he even made up little poems about it. In winter he might say:

Snow, snow, the lovely snow,

You step on a bit and down you go.

Or on a rainy day he’d say:

Sun, sun, the beautiful sun,

It never shines, the son-of-a-gun!

Listening to Mr. Foster recite his silly poems, one day my imagination got to wondering what might really be going on in that store …

Which character is most like you?

There is quite a bit of me in Zac Sparks—in two ways. Firstly, as a little boy I was very active and excitable and I got into a fair amount of trouble. I used to climb on top of the piano and shout, “Jump, Mommy, jump!” and from wherever she was in the house my mother would have to come running to catch me. And I once pushed the neighborhood bully off a high stone wall into a big tub of water! I picture Zac, under normal circumstances, as being like that.

This story, however, does not take place under normal circumstances. Zac’s mother has died and he’s been plunged into a dark situation, so for most of the book he struggles with grief, shock, fear, and confusion. This changes him. While he still has “sparks” of mischief and excitability, on the whole his behavior is much subdued, his natural character repressed. Interestingly I think this side of him reflects, to some extent, my adult self. Life has a lot of hard experiences that can knock you sideways. At some level aren’t adults trying to get back to the fully alive children they once were?

So yes, I identify with Zac. But to say which character is most like me, I have to admit it’s Ches. I like Ches a lot—so much that I decided to write book two in the series from Ches’s point of view. Talk about repressed! Due to his background he has so many problems. But precisely because of that, he has a great journey to make from darkness to light.

Who is your favorite character?

Chelsea! I love her because she is the one who has most retained her childlikeness. Through her connection with Eldy, she has resisted all pressure to conform to the evil that has Five Corners in its grip. Book three in the series will be from Chelsea’s point of view and I can hardly wait to write it!

This story seems to be an allegory. Did you start out intending to write an allegory or did it just happen?

For years I’d written nonfiction books with a message, and I was tired of that. I had nothing more to tell anyone; instead I just wanted to tell a good story. I had just turned fifty and I realized that fiction is what I’d really wanted to write all along. Somehow I’d gotten away from that, and it was time to return to my original dream.

So with The Blue Umbrella I set out with no message in mind, no allegory, just a story. As I went along, I myself was very surprised at the spiritual depth that developed. But I don’t think this makes my book an allegory, so much as a work of literature with an allegorical dimension. An allegory tends to feel wooden because there is a clear one-to-one correspondence between all the elements of the story and some other reality. An allegory is so linked to what it represents that it cannot really stand on its own, whereas a good literary story, while it always points beyond itself, is fully alive in its own right.

Did you know how The Blue Umbrella would turn out? Were you surprised by any of the plot twists or characters?

At the outset I had a vague idea of the ending, which turned out to be completely different! Other than that, all I had were a few key scenes, places I wanted to get to. And I emphasize the word places. Books begin in different ways—sometimes with a character, sometimes with a bit of plot or setting. The Blue Umbrella is very much a novel of setting. From the beginning what was most vivid in my mind was the place: Porter’s General Store at the five corners. Especially vivid was the all-important second story of Porter’s. I’ve never actually been there (in the real store, I mean), but I did have a chance to visit the upper story of another old building down the street, while it was being renovated. This was a former service station that was being turned into, of all things, a chocolate factory! When the owner took me upstairs, I saw this huge room that looked like a dance hall, with a beautiful hardwood floor and no pillars, illuminated in the most extraordinary way by late-afternoon light. The building had one-hundred-foot beams, which meant (obviously) they were cut from trees at least a hundred feet tall. You don’t see that anymore. My visit to that upper room was the inspiration for the Weatherworks.

Because I began my book with a setting, and not much else, the plot and characters came as a complete surprise as I wrote. I kept trying to make an outline but this didn’t seem to work for me. In fact I discovered that I didn’t really know how to tell a story, how to keep a plot moving over the long haul of a novel. Finding myself in the midst of a very steep learning curve, eventually I took a course that turned out to be exactly what I needed. The course was called Story, taught by Robert McKee—really a screenwriting course but wonderful for novelists, too. I can’t recommend it highly enough. (McKee also has a book by the same title.)

What is your favorite type of weather and why?

I love thunder and lightning and wind. It goes back to my childhood when (just like Zac) I used to stay up with my mother late at night to watch storms. As it happens, the place where I live now (on the West Coast) doesn’t have much electrical activity, but we do get a lot of rain. There’s nothing I like better than an all-day rain. It’s great writing weather! When the sun shines, it feels like a person should be outside enjoying it. But I’d rather have a good excuse to stay indoors and read and write.

When did you decide to be a writer?

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was eleven years old. In grade 7 I had a great teacher who taught a form of creative writing that she called Intensive Writing. It was really a sneaky way of getting us to write poetry. From the moment I discovered that I could simply look at something (such as a spider spinning a web; I think that was my first topic) and write about it—and not just about it but my feelings about it—from that point I never looked back. I grew up in a family where deep feelings were repressed, never talked about, and so the idea that I could explore my feelings in writing was revolutionary to me. It seemed totally radical, and still does. Writing is a way of bringing one’s inner life out into the open, and so bridging the two, and this is the most world-changing act a person can do. We all have these secret lives that we ourselves, often, are hardly aware of. To transform secrets into words and share them with others is truth.

In my pursuit of writing as a career, I made many mistakes. I’ve made even more in living my life. But somehow one thing I got right, both in writing and in life, was that, if I was going to be a writer, it meant not focusing on anything else. It meant not having any other career. It meant believing firmly enough in my artistic vision that, as long as I followed it faithfully, everything would work out. And it has. During my twenties I did a lot of odd jobs to support my writing—everything from library work to farming to garbage collecting. But for the last twenty-five years I’ve done nothing but write full time. And I love it!

Are you a disciplined writer or do you just write when you feel like it?

Yes! I write every day, five days a week, and usually I feel like it. I wake up in the morning thinking, “Oh boy, I get to write today!”

Having said that, I normally don’t start until about 3:00 p.m., and then I write for three or four hours. Any longer and I soon get burned out. I start late in the day because, if I started any earlier, I would just keep going and become a workaholic. That’s how much I love writing. So for me, the only way to have a life is to have it during the first part of the day. I also need time for planning, thinking, reading, handling the business end of writing, and just staring out the window or listening to music. Writing requires a lot of “nothing” time for mulling and daydreaming. Without that, creativity doesn’t happen.

If I occasionally come to my writing desk and don’t feel like writing, I just do it anyway, like being on a hike and putting one foot in front of another even if I’m worn out. It’s like priming a pump: Pour in a few words, crank the handle a few times, and soon the stream is flowing. If I don’t know where to start, I start where I want to. I try to identify one phrase or sentence or image that I find really intriguing, even if it’s just a fragment and doesn’t seem to be what I should be doing. Writing is fundamentally about writing what I want, not what I should. Otherwise it stops being fun.

What is your favorite novel?

My favorite books these days are children’s books. I began reading them ten years ago, in preparation for writing my own, and it was a great revelation to read these stories as an adult. Children’s literature allows an author to be idealistic in a way that modern adult literature does not. There are happy endings, heroic characters, a clear battle between good and evil, and portals leading to other worlds—all things that reflect, I believe, the deepest truths of life.

I love The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and some other classics. But right now I believe we’re in a new golden age of children’s literature, and I’m very excited about some books that have appeared more recently. For example, there’s Harry Potter (of course!), Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn series, and many others.

My favorite novel of all time is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—full of page after page of pure, gorgeous, totally absorbing storytelling. Stevenson’s Treasure Island is like that too; you get so deeply lost in the story you don’t even notice you’re turning pages. Another of my favorites is Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea—partly because I recall so vividly reading it as a boy, probably right around the time I began thinking of being a writer. I have a photograph of myself reading this book, which I think was the one that first opened my eyes to the imaginative possibilities of other worlds.

What is the main thing you hope readers remember from this story?

Weather: how it looks and feels, and how it suggests something much more than meets the eye. I want readers to remember Zac in his room at the Aunties’ house, listening to the wind as it moves tree branches against his windowpane like someone tapping to be let in.

Have you ever wondered why weather is the number one topic of conversation? It seems like the smallest sort of small talk, but I think weather is really a very BIG topic. This is obvious in our own time, when the world is heading for climate disaster and everyone’s talking about it. But even just normal chitchat about weather is, I believe, far more significant than it appears. I think it’s a safe way for people to acknowledge something very important. We all have a deep yearning to discuss the big questions in life (such as “Why are we here?” and “What’s it all about?”), but often we cannot talk freely because there are so many different beliefs and it just gets really awkward. Weather, however, is something right in our faces that both deeply affects us and that we can all agree on. It’s perfectly obvious if it’s raining or snowing or the sun is shining, and it’s also perfectly obvious that such magnificent phenomena reflect a greater reality. Weather is the ultimate metaphor.

2009-10-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

This week we're featuring The Last Word, by Kathy Herman.

Fill out the form on the right for a chance to win a free copy!

All entries must be received by Sunday, November 1.

Scroll down for a note from Kathy Herman, and discussion questions.

Have a great week!

A Note From the Author, Kathy Herman

2009-10-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

I am not ashamed of the gospel,

because it is the power of God for the

salvation of everyone who believes:

first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

Romans 1:16

Are we, the body of believers, ashamed of the gospel? Why are we so easily intimidated into silence—into letting those whose hearts are blinded by unredeemed sin remake our holidays, determine what is politically correct, and remove any mention of God from our schools, our government buildings, and our national treasures?

Perhaps we lack the passion to safeguard what is sacred because we’ve lost the courage to share our faith in our daily lives. Do we believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him—that without Him, and Him alone, unbelievers are doomed to hell? Are we deeply concerned for their eternal welfare?

I confess to you that this was a difficult book to write. I did not start out writing a story that made a bold statement about the choice we all have to spend eternity with God or without Him. But my characters fought me the whole way and forced my hand to proclaim the truth, even at the risk of sounding preachy.

As I’m writing this afterword, the war against Christmas is raging all over America. How dare we “offend” the godless by holding to a blessed tradition that pays homage to the Word made flesh who gave His life so that we don’t have to live in darkness. These well-meaning individuals believe they can find peace on earth without turning to Him who is our peace. It can never happen. The only light in this dark world was lit in Bethlehem two thousand years ago and continues to burn today in the hearts of believers. He is both the Giver and the Gift, our only hope.

Most of us will never have a divine appointment like Brill’s, when our faith will be tested to the death. But almost every believer will face situations when, like Vanessa, we must choose to stand firm on that which cannot be compromised, even if it costs us dearly.

I have a feeling most of us don’t have to look past our own family, friends, and coworkers to find people who need to hear the message of the cross. Have you lamented that if these should die without a saving knowledge of Jesus, they would be doomed to a fate far worse than death? Perhaps you’ve tried to broach the subject but have been rebuffed?

Are you bold enough to try again? Or to give this book to them because you care more about their eternal future than the possibility they’ll figure out why you gave it to them? When we stand before God and give an account of our lives, it won’t matter if our efforts to share the gospel were met with jeering and rejection. What will matter is that we were obedient to the Great Commission.

Isaiah 55:11 promises that the Word of God never returns empty and that it will accomplish His purpose. Brill certainly experienced that, and so did Vanessa. Only the Holy Spirit can bring a person to the place of repentance and faith. Our job as believers is to tell the good news, and I loved being able to weave it into this story. If it touched you, please pass it on to someone you care about.

And if you read this story and would like to know more about how to become a Christian and begin a personal relationship with God, feel free to contact me through my guestbook page on my Web site (listed below).

I can hardly believe we’ve finished book two. Join me in the final book of the trilogy, The Right Call, where we go back to Sophie Trace and see how the Jessups are doing—and what Vanessa decided to name the baby. And whether Ethan’s friendship with Vanessa turns into something more. But don’t get too comfortable. Mystery and suspense abound!

I would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop by my Web site at www.KathyHerman.com and leave your comments on my guest book. Or look me up on Facebook. I read and respond to every email and greatly value your input.

In Him,

Kathy Herman

Discussion Questions for "The Last Word"

2009-10-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

1. In Romans 1:16, the apostle Paul makes a bold declaration: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” What do you think it means to be ashamed of the gospel?

2. Is there ever a legitimate reason not to share the gospel? Can you give examples of what might be a legitimate reason and what would be an excuse?

3. Can you think of times you’ve been bold about sharing your faith and times when you’ve been reluctant—or even ashamed? Can you explain what motivated you either way? Do you think God wants us to share our faith, even if we haven’t been called to the “mission field” as it’s generally understood? What might be a broader definition of mission field?

4. First Corinthians 1:18 tells us, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” What do you think this means? Do the words make you feel more inclined or less inclined to share your faith with an unbeliever? And why?

5. Do you know people who see the salvation message as foolishness? Have you ever tried to explain to an unbeliever what the Christian life is all about, only to be ridiculed? Patronized? Made to feel defensive?

6. Have you ever tried to hold an unbeliever to the same moral standard as yours? Should you? Who or what brings a person to a saving knowledge of Christ? Without the mind of Christ, can that person even understand he or she is lost?

7. If you found yourself in Brill’s circumstances, dialoguing with your attacker, do you think you would have the courage to share your faith? Do you think Brill’s firm belief that when she died she would be with the Lord gave her strength?

8. Why do you think Brill’s persistence in the face of death made an impression on Merrick Fountain—was it just what she said about God, or was it more than that?

9. Do you agree with Brill’s assertion that everything happens for a reason—even the really difficult things? If so, can you give a Scripture that supports it? Have you ever seen evidence of this in your own life? Could you believe God would use it for good even without seeing evidence?

10. Romans 8:28 makes a strong statement of faith: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” How did God use Brill’s dire circumstances for good in this story? If she had been murdered, would that have negated the truth of Romans 8:28? Is it possible that a believer’s suffering, even at the hands of a killer, might serve God’s higher purpose? Is that hard for you to accept? Be honest.

11. Vanessa’s sinful choices resulted in an unwanted pregnancy, and her choice not to abort the baby resulted in a severed relationship. Both choices, one wrong and one right, initially brought her sorrow. What was it that motivated her to make the right choice and not abort the baby? Do you believe she could have been happy for long if she had gotten an abortion? Or if Ty had changed his mind about breaking up with her?

12. Do you think God can use even our mistakes for His higher purpose? How did He use Vanessa’s good and bad choices to bring Ty to the place of realizing he needed God?

13. Which do you think is the better teacher: blessing or suffering? Does God use both? Which has made a bigger impact in your life?

14. Which do you think is more important if we are to be ambassadors of the gospel—what we say or what we do? Or can the two be separated? Which do you think is more likely to offend an unbeliever—our sin? Our hypocrisy? Our apathy?

15. If you could meet one of the characters in this story, which one would it be? What would you talk about? What did you take away from this story?

2009-10-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

Hello fiction fans! We're taking a brief break from featuring books. If you'd like to fill out the form on the right with your name and email address, we'll be sure to email you when we're running another contest. Otherwise, we will be back the week of October 26th. Thanks for supporting fiction from David C. Cook!

2009-10-05T13:50:00.000-07:00

Fill out the entry form on the right by October 11th for a chance to win a FREE copy of The Transformation, by Terri Kraus.

Scroll down for a note from the author and book discussion questions!

A Note from Terri Kraus

2009-10-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

Writing a novel set in the world of the restoration of old buildings has always been a dream of mine. The idea of renovation is in my family’s blood. I’m an interior design professional. My brothers are rehabbers. My husband, Jim, and I have survived the renovation of three houses.

I know the upheaval well, the despair of having no control, the agonizing over style decisions, the budget constraints, the disagreements between contractor and owner, and the emotional roller coaster of unexpected problems and unanticipated gifts along the way. Together my clients and I have accepted big disappointments, celebrated tiny successes, and experienced the inexpressible elation at seeing what was once in ruins—old, broken, useless—become, with all its quirks, a beautiful, completely renewed, and usable place for people to share life again. Looking back on all those projects, I can echo the sentiment in the opening line of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Many of you are probably, like me, HGTV fans who watch the many shows about fixing up old houses. You find yourself glued to the glimpses of contractors and owners engaged in the process. You live vicariously through the rehabbing, renovating, and restoring.

I can relate. I’ve always been captivated by old buildings. Poring over books about art, architectural styles, and decoration from all over the world has always been one of my favorite pastimes. As I’ve traveled internationally and visited many of the places I’ve studied independently and in the course of my education in design, I’ve become even more passionate about restoration. (I’m the woman you might see sitting on a bench along the wall of the Sistine Chapel, silently weeping as I take in Michelangelo’s magnificent masterpiece in the simplicity of that sacred space.) I can talk forever about the importance of preserving buildings that are testaments to the creative impulse, the hours of painstaking effort, the motivation and dedication of artists, designers, craftsmen, and artisans from previous eras. All were, no doubt, imperfect people—but people used as instruments in God’s hands to create perfectly rendered works of art that endure and can stir our hearts so many, many years later.

For me, there’s something quite magical about walking into an old place, with all its history, where so much life has been lived, where so many events and significant moments have taken place—the happy ones, the sad ones, and all the everyday moments and hours in between. Imagining who might have inhabited a house, how the family came together, the love they shared, their conversations, the tears and laughter, is irresistible to me. I find inspiration as I imagine how they celebrated and grieved, how they overcame adversity, how they survived tragedy, then moved on to enjoy life
within the old walls once again.

One of the joys of my life was visiting the little northern Italian village, nestled among olive groves high up in the Apennine Mountains, where my maternal grandparents were born, grew up, and married before emigrating to America in 1920. A short lane connects their two families’ farmhouses. In between them stands a small, now empty house of ancient, mellowed stone where my grandparents lived as newlyweds. How full my heart felt as I walked over that threshold! I pictured them as a young couple in the first blush of matrimony, with all their hopes and dreams … before their brave journey (separately) across a wide ocean to a strange land where all was unknown. Within those aged walls, did they speak of their fears as they prepared to leave their homeland, certain they’d never see their parents and siblings again? What kind of courage did that require? What words did they use to comfort and reassure one another? I wondered. I could see, in my mind’s eye, my grandmother stirring a pot of pasta as my grandfather stoked the fire. I could even hear the crackling of the firewood, smell the slight wood smoke.…

A few artifacts remained of their time there, and I was delighted to be able to take them back to America with me. Now I treasure and display them in my own home because they connect me with that place and time and remind me of my rich heritage—all stemming from that small structure, still standing, solidly built so long ago.

I love the metaphor of restoration, which is why I came up with the idea for the Project Restoration series—stories that would follow both the physical restoration of a building and the emotional/spiritual restoration of a character. Perhaps in the Project Restoration series, you’ll find a character who mirrors your own life and points you toward the kind of restoration you long for.

After all, God is in the business of restoring lives—reclaiming, repairing, renewing what was broken and bringing beauty from ashes. I know, because I’ve seen it firsthand. For many years, I’ve worked in women’s ministries. I’ve seen many women—as well as the men and children they love—deal with scars from their past that shape their todays and tomorrows. They all long for restoration—to live hopefully, joyfully, and productively once again—but that also requires forgiveness. Forgiveness of others (whether they deserve it or not) and, perhaps most importantly, forgiveness of oneself in order to be healthy and available to God. Clinging to past hurts or “unfairness,” hostility, anger, grudges, resentment, bitterness, or allowing abuse to alter your self-worth renders your life virtually useless. Unforgiveness shapes your perception of yourself, your outlook on life, the kind of relationships you have, and keeps you in “stuck” mode. It leaves you without hope, in a dark, emotionally paralyzing, spiritually debilitating, physically draining state and causes so much unnecessary pain … even addiction.

Yet God Himself stands and waits, extending the gift of restoration. The light of His love shines on all those dark places deep within us, exposing what needs His healing touch, renewing hope, providing freedom from bondage. This is the type of restoration I’ve become passionate about too. For when our souls are gloriously freed through God’s renovation, we become whole, useful, and able to extend the forgiveness we have experienced to others. Our hope is renewed. Then individuals, families, churches, and entire communities can be transformed!

What event in your past do you need to let go of? It is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience the renewal that awaits you through saying yes to God’s invitation of heart restoration … and the life-transforming joy that will follow.

Discussion Questions for "The Transformation"

2009-10-05T13:33:00.000-07:00

1. What was your initial response when Samantha Cohen reveals what she planned to do to the church (convert it into a restaurant/nightclub)? Do you think Oliver should have walked away from the project at the outset? Would you? Why or why not?

2. What struck you about Pastor Han’s story? Were you comfortable with him sharing his secrets with Samantha? Explain.

3. How would you describe the relationship between Oliver and Taller, as brothers? In what ways does their perception of each other affect that relationship? Are there ways in which you can relate, with your own siblings?

4. What’s the first hint that Oliver has some “issues” with his mother, and her expectations of him? How are these hints confirmed as the story develops?

5. In what ways has Oliver been affected by his father’s death when he was a young boy? How was the Barnett family dynamic affected? Look back on your own childhood. What issues have influenced the way your family interacts, even now?

6. In what ways has Samantha been affected by her mother’s death—and the manner of her death—when she was a teenager? How was the Cohen family dynamic affected? Looking back on your teen years, do you remember words spoken that you wish had never been spoken? If so, how have those words altered your perspective of that person? Of yourself?

7. How did you feel about Oliver hiring the Pratt brothers as carpenters on the project? If it was your decision, would you have hired them? Is it easy for you to give people “second chances”? Why or why not? What was your reaction when Oliver receives conflicting advice about his decision from Pastor Mosco and Barth? Whose view was closest to your own? Explain.

8. Would you call Paula’s faith “authentic”? Why or why not? What clues can you give as proof of your theory? Do you think Oliver believed her faith was authentic? What would make him think so—or wonder? What, to you, are signs of true Christian belief?

9. How is Oliver different from all of the other men with whom Samantha has had relationships? How did the way he refused to compromise his moral beliefs impact their relationship? Have you ever been in a situation where you had to stick to your guns, morally, and it cost you something? What happened as a result?

10. Besides Oliver’s influence, what other factors came into play to cause Samantha to think about her relationship to God? How did Sarah—a fellow and “completed Jew,” someone more like Samantha than Oliver or Cameron—make a difference in her understanding of Christian belief? In what way(s) can you reach out to those who are similar or different from you in faith and/or background?

11. What’s the difference between law and grace? Explain, using a couple of examples from the book. What do you tend to lean most toward—law or grace? What factors in your background have led you to respond that way?

12. What was your response to Barth’s opinion on how God views suicide? In what way(s) do Barth’s words influence situations you may have faced with hurting people in the past?

13. Do you think there was something special about the church building? The windows? Is there such a thing as “sacred space”? Why or why not?

14. What did you think was going to happen when Paula discovers she’s pregnant? Were you surprised by the outcome? Explain.

15. How did God use Oliver to fulfill His plan for “the church,” even when he struggled with transforming a church building into something else? How might you use your current circumstances and stresses to help touch others’ lives and build “the church”?

2009-09-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

Enter by October 4th to win a free copy of Stretch Marks, by Kimberly Stuart!

Scroll down for great extra features, including Babs' diary excerpts and a recipe!

From the Diary of Babs....

2009-09-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from the private journals of Barbara “Babs” Rathbun

January 1
Happy New Year! Could I possibly have a better job? I spent last night counting down to the brand-new year on the upper deck, next to the topless area that, thankfully, was not in use due to the hour. Though I must say I’ve seen plenty of those people only minimally interested in the sun and mostly interested in the parade, if you know what I’m saying. Last night I danced with not one but three doctors, one of whom is recently single and from SPAIN. He showed me how they eat one grape for every chime that sounds at midnight. Muy interesante. Unfortunately, he (Miguel? Manuel? Something like that) had to catch an early flight out of port to get back to saving the world, one surgery at a time. I certainly did not stand in his way. Where would all of us be without professionals like him?!

February 12
Having a very difficult time getting a hold of my daughter, who appears to be stuck in the late nineties with regards to her emotional maturity. I’ve already written at length about her similarly troubling FASHION time warp and will not take more time on the subject here. To date: twelve phone calls, ten answering-machine messages, two postcards, all unanswered. Considering taking more drastic measures.

Date Unknown
Mia is pregnant by that wretch of a Scandinavian. I’m nearly beside myself with horror and grief. I never should have let her watch that sex ed. video in sixth grade. My work experience has been called upon without pause; there’s something so comforting to people in having a sunny disposition in the face of crisis. Just this morning, as I was picking up Mia’s mail, her neighbor, a very nice black man who might be related to Barack Obama, said I looked like the face of sweetness itself. I smiled a winner smile to show my gratitude but had to wipe away tears on my way back up to Mia’s place. Goes to show: The show must go on but the actress leads a lonely life. Listened to Barbara Streisand the rest of the morning.

May 21
Wazzup wazzup wazzup! I’m hip to the hop with urban culture and putting down ROOTS in Chi-town. This is a city that explodes with high adventure and new experiences, not the least of which is soul food. Silas and I have visited three of his favorite restaurants. At Sugar Snap’s, I became fast friends with our waitress, Shanelle, who has invited me to her house to teach me
how to braid hair. She swears it doesn’t matter that my last cut left me with no longer than two inches of length. I was forced to believe her. I mean, remember when Oprah showed up one day—just like that—with long and perfectly coiffed curls? If she can do it in Chicago, so can I! Peace out.

June 3
Mia is not far enough along to be acting so miserable. She absolutely wigged today when I surprised her by cleaning out her closet. Apparently waffle-print henleys are still all the rage among tree-huggers. She insisted on keeping ALL NINE.

June 30
Chicago has lost its luster. The heat today will reach a scorching 101 degrees, no breeze, 92% humidity. WHY oh WHY did I quit my job?!?!

July 15
Sweet Silas brought me a bouquet of baby’s breath today. Told me it reminded him of me, beautiful and delicate but undervalued by those who need my help. That man made me cry, I tell you. August, doesn’t matter the exact day. Hot, hot, hot, miserably miserable. I refuse to take public transportation just on the sweat principle. Even children seem tired out by summer. Were there not Lake Michigan, I think the entire city would go mad. I tried discussing the lunacy of living here with Mia, but she was not particularly receptive. Must be the final trimester. That and the swelling.

September 30
Mia’s due date, come and almost gone. I’m so nervous, I’ve taken to giving free manicures to all the women in my building. Warned Silas tonight that when I’m finished with Mrs. Whittinghouse on the second floor (a prospect that gives me the willies, I must admit), he’s next. He threatened to bring Mia over to the hospital himself and have them induce.

Portabello Burger Recipe!

2009-09-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

Adam’s Begrudgingly Vegetarian Portabello Burgers

4 Asiago bagels from your favorite bagel shop
4 large portabello caps

Sauce:
Soy sauce, sake or white wine, lemon juice

Garnish:
Romaine leaves
Sliced white cheddar, Pecorino Romano, or in a pinch, Swiss
Dill-infused mayo

1. Slice bagels and spread with butter. Set aside.

2. Brush mushroom caps with olive oil. Sprinkle with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

3. Fire up the grill and slap on the mushrooms, trying not to think about how much better a fillet would be. Grill 2 minutes or so on each side. During the last minute add the bagels to toast. Watch the bread carefully or this step could end badly.

4. Meanwhile (or before you start, depending on how adept you are at multitasking), pour into a small saucepan ~1/3 c. soy sauce, ~1/3 c. sake or white wine, and some fresh lemon juice. Please don’t press me on exact measurements; you’ll know if it’s wrong and then you just doctor it up. Let this concoction reduce for 10 minutes or so.

5. Mayo: Chop up some fresh dill or smoosh some dried dill in your hands. Add to mayo and mix. I also add a splash of lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Again, exact measurements are not really the issue here.

6. Assemble sandwiches. Bagel first, then mushroom, reduced wine sauce, romaine, cheese if desired, and a spread of mayo.

7. Present to vegetarian love interest with nonchalance, a smile, and the promise of a chocolate dessert. Make this enough times and she won’t even mind that her mushroom shares a grill with your steak.

2009-09-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

Leave a comment by Monday, September 21st, for a chance to win a free copy of Three Weddings and a Bar Mitzvah!

Scroll down for a conversation with Melody Carlson and book discussion questions.

A Conversation with Melody Carlson

2009-09-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

Did anything about the characters or events of 86 Bloomberg Place surprise you as you wrote the series?

Because I never outline my stories, I’m often caught off guard by my characters. I was shocked when Kendall slept with Matthew Harmon and even more shocked when she went down to LA to stalk him. When it turned out she was pregnant, I wondered, What’s it going to take to get to this girl? Then I was surprised to unravel Lelani’s story and why she’d left Emma with her parents in Maui. I was almost as surprised when Lelani stood up to her mom and fought to get Emma back. Then I was shocked when Kendall almost drowned, and there was a brief time when I thought she might lose her baby. Instead, she found her faith—and Killiki. That was fun. So, yes, you could say I get surprised all the time.

How much of your own life is represented in the lives of these four women? Do you identify more with Megan, Lelani, Anna, or Kendall?

I feel like I have a bit of all of them in me. Like Megan, I tend to be fairly grounded and practical. Also, I worked for an interior designer, and I’ve organized/decorated for several weddings. Like Lelani, I can sometimes be a quiet observer as well as a peacemaker. Like Anna, I worked as an editor for a small publishing house. Kendall is probably least like me, although I have to admit to having done some pretty impetuous things in my lifetime.
Which one of these characters ended up being your favorite in the series?

Kendall, for sure! At first she made me crazy and I wanted to shake her. But at the same time, I loved her childlike qualities. She was fun and impulsive and slightly naïve in a worldly sort of way. But she was also on a path to self-destruct. Still, it was fun to see a character go through all that and finally find God in a big way that totally transformed her life. I believe in those kinds of miracles.

You’ve written so many novels for and about young women. Why is this audience so close to your heart?

Partly because I came to faith as a teenager and am fully aware of what a huge impact that had on my life. But besides that, I think it’s really hard being twenty-something these days. Romantic relationships are tricky to navigate, friends come and go, careers don’t necessarily stay on track, parents can be difficult, and what happens when you make a bad choice? My hope is that readers will live/learn vicariously through these characters and be encouraged to live their best life.

If your readers could take away one idea, promise, or hope from the 86 Bloomberg Place series, what would you want that to be?

I’d like them to feel hopeful that all things are possible when you let God be the major influence in your life.

Discussion Questions for "Three Weddings and a Bar Mitzvah"

2009-09-15T13:28:00.000-07:00

1. Would you have counseled Lelani or Kendall to elope? How would that decision have affected their friendships? Their family dynamics? Their romances?

2. Lelani and Kendall had to deal with the “interference” of Mrs. Mendez and Mrs. Weis in their celebrations and plans. What did you admire about how they handled these challenges? What would you criticize?

3. How did you feel when Gil suggested Lelani move their wedding to Maui for her mother’s sake? In what ways did the idea help or hurt Lelani? Do you think Alana’s apology was connected to this gesture?

4. What gave Kendall the strength to overcome her sisters’ condescension and exclusion?

5. If you were Lelani, would you have agreed to a face-to-face meeting with Ben? How would you have handled that encounter?

6. Megan observed that Kendall and Nana had a lot in common. What were their best common qualities? Do you have a friend or loved one who is both very different from you and a lot like you? What does this relationship mean to you?

7. What do you think was the root cause of Anna’s and Megan’s “man trouble”? Could it have been prevented? Why or why not?

8. Was Anna’s makeover of Chelsea selfish or altruistic?

9. Compare the ways in which each character’s mother influenced her choices and self-confidence. Identify examples of how a negative action on the mother’s part nevertheless led to a positive result in the daughter’s life.

10. Over the course of the series, which character’s journey most closely mimicked your own? What lessons learned by this character connected most personally with you?

2009-09-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

Leave a comment by Tuesday, September 15, for a chance to win a free copy of
In the Arms of Immortals, by Ginger Garrett.

Scroll down for an interview with the author and discussion questions!

An Interview with Ginger Garrett

2009-09-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

1. Where did you get Mbube’s name and how do you pronounce it?

Mbube is a Zulu word for lion, and it is also a form of African song, sung most often by men. Mbube is pronounced “Em-boo-beh.” I like to think of him as Bob Marley meets the Hulk. I don’t know why, but all the guardian angels in my stories appear in my mind as Africans. Africa was the continent that sheltered Jesus Christ as a young child when King Herod was hunting for Jesus to kill Him.
God reminds us in the Bible that “out of Egypt I called my Son.” Africa gave shelter to a young Christ, to God, and I believe there is an evil out there that has never forgiven Africa for that. If Africa protected the young Jesus, it’s easy to imagine angels as supernatural Africans who protect us, too.

2. You’re saying you believe in the Devil?

I believe there is an active, intelligent evil in this world, an evil that is at work to destroy everything God considers beautiful. This evil has several names in Scripture: the Enemy, the Evil One, Satan, Lucifer. Those names have become so perverted in our culture that I hate to even reference them. The Devil to us is a mascot for canned ham. It’s a masterful piece of public relations, don’t you think? The Devil as a mascot for ham, angels as sweet cherubs that offer no protection, and Jesus as a wise teacher in cool sandals but not really capable of outrageous miracles. Everything in that scenario is so innocuous; it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. There is a shocking truth hiding beneath that thin frosting. Someone is hoping we don’t scrape through it.

3. How did you choose the subject matter for each book in the Scribe series?

I picked the three most important moments in medieval history that changed women’s lives forever:
• Anne Boleyn gave us the right to read, including, but not limited to, the right to read the Bible. (And thus, book one, In the Shadow of Lions.)
• The women who survived the Black Death, though their names are lost to us, created a culture of survivors who launched the great Renaissance of science and art. We, too, must answer the question they faced: Amid so much suffering and pain, how then shall we live? (And thus, book two, In the Arms of Immortals.)
• For the final book in the series, I will be telling the tale of the witch hunts in medieval Europe. Women with strong wills, strong minds, or women who no longer had families were targeted for death. “Christians” both instigated the murders and stopped them. The Church was forced to confront perilous questions: What, and who, defines a woman? Are women more prone to sin and moral weakness? Do women have an equal place in God’s kingdom? (And thus, book three, In the Eyes of Eternity.)
I think book three will be, by far, the most difficult book to write in the series. But it is my belief that we are indeed “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” These women of our past are waiting for us to make courageous, dangerous decisions … or suffer again as they
did.

4. Did you exaggerate the symptoms of the plague? It seems that people died very quickly. Were you just in a hurry to finish the book?

Eyewitness accounts claim victims could die within a matter of minutes. Many stories were of a plague victim walking down the street, and if someone went out to meet them, the healthy person died within minutes of contact. Some historians and scientists refuse to believe these claims, for the claims do not fit our modern beliefs of the plague.
We also assume past generations were not as smart as we are. (This applies to the Bible as well. Although the books that compose the Bible were written by eyewitnesses, we refuse to believe what they tell us because it doesn’t fit our modern beliefs.) One question I try to ask myself as I research is, “What if it is all true? What if those eyewitnesses were right, and some died within minutes?” We would be able to immediately rule out all the plagues we know, which take much, much longer to kill. We would be left with no explanation … and we are of an age that cannot bear to live without explanation.
Which was, for me, the greatest problem of the Black Death and this novel: the question of why? Why did God allow a plague to sweep in and decimate the world? We often hear the estimate that the Black Death killed up to half of Europe. That’s true, but we should also say that the plague wiped out a huge number of people all over the world, including Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, and even remote frozen islands. Why would God allow that? Was He
mad? After all, every plague mentioned in the Bible was associated with a divine punishment for bad behavior. God had set a precedent of sending plague as punishment.
When the plague struck, everyone asked, “Why?” They immediately began pointing fingers. The Jews, in particular, were blamed. Thank God, the wise Pope spoke out against this belief and ordered that Jews be left unharmed. (But he was unable to stop many mass murders.) I can only begin to explain this violence when I remember the AIDS epidemic at its beginning. The hate and violent speech directed at gays stunned me. Those claiming to be Christians said they “knew” as a biblical certainty that God had sent AIDS to punish gay people. (Children were dying, too, but this was conveniently ignored. Was God mad at them or did His divine wrath just have a scattershot pattern?)
So much damage is done by Christians when we attempt to answer the question of why. No answer suffices, no words can heal that wound. It is a sacred suffering. Perhaps if God gave us answers, we would find comfort in them instead of Him. How many senseless words are spoken at bedsides and funerals? “It was God’s will.” “This was God’s plan.” “Everything happens for a reason.” We find comfort in them and we shouldn’t. There may be a truth in those statements, but none of them is the whole Truth. We have to find comfort in the mystery of God, and there are no human words that can reach into that place and illuminate it. We were not created with minds that allow us to comprehend the ultimate answer, yet God left us with the capacity to question. That’s the mystery in itself, I guess.

5. You say the Black Death was the death of the angels. How did you see this reflected in art from the period?

In the art that was created after the Black Death, Christ became more “human.” Crucifixes began to show a suffering Christ, a God in pain who was naked and bleeding. Christ was still portrayed as divine and “untouchable” in many paintings, with gold and illuminating light, but we now needed to emotionally connect with His suffering. Art also began to show Death walking among the living, walking with priests, menacing unsuspecting women from dark shadowy corners.
A fascination with demons crept onto our canvases, while angels went from strong, sizable defenders to chubby babies who could barely hold their heads up, much less carry a sword. Art from this period has profoundly impacted our spiritual lives today. We still picture angels as sweet, innocuous beings, while we imagine demons as powerful creatures to be feared. We are out of balance.

6. How long does it take to write a novel?

I don’t know. I’ve never written one. I have, however, written a lot of sentences. I write one sentence, and then do this over and over, day after day, until I find I have filled up hundreds of pages. Then I begin deleting sentences, one by one, over and over, day after day, until I find I have deleted dozens of pages. Then I send it to my editor and bury myself face first in a plate of chocolates.
If I begin thinking about writing an entire novel, I’ll choke from stress. Novels are big undertakings. But sentences? I can write those.

Discussion Questions for "In the Arms of Immortals"

2009-09-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

1. The plague was merciless. Suffering was extreme. Everyone was in anguish. Why do you think a merciful God would allow this suffering? How can we call God merciful when thousands, or millions, are brutalized?

2. How can we learn to live without answers? Does this make us fools or faithful? Explain your answer.

3. What are we to do with the anguish we feel when we (or those we love) are victimized without reason and there is no justice to be had on earth?

4. Only Lazarro, as priest, was allowed to hear confession and give last rites (Last Unction). As the plague progressed, the pope allowed all women to assume this role too. Priests could not attend to all the dying, so women were allowed to comfort others in the name of Christ. This was the first time women were allowed to speak in God’s name to a dying world. Why was this moment important in women’s history? Do you see any ripple effects of this decision down through the ages and in society today? If so, name a few.

5. What does it mean to be healed? Is it only physical, or is there more to it? Do you believe there can be total healing on earth? Why or why not?

6. In his final scene, Del Grasso tells Gio to never ask the question “Why?” Instead, ask the question “How?” In your life, have you ever been tangled up in the question of why? If so, tell the story. In what way(s) have you let go of the whys and started exploring the hows? “How, then, shall you live?” (Bonus points for anyone who can find the Scripture verse that inspired this line!)

7. The Black Death was called “the death of the angels.” It was the time when the Age of Fear began. Which rules your life: faith or fear? Why? Why is it easier to respond to a crisis out
of fear, rather than out of faith?

8. If you could change the ending to In the Arms of Immortals, which two people would be alive and married to each other at the end of the story? Why would you choose this ending?

9. If you could go back in time and witness any event in history, what would it be and why?

10. If you could talk to your guardian angel, what questions would you want to ask?

2009-09-03T13:34:00.001-07:00

2009-08-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

Leave a comment by August 23rd for a chance to win a free copy of
Safe At Home, by Richard Doster.

Scroll down for a conversation with the author, and in-depth discussion questions!

A Conversation with Richard Doster

2009-08-10T14:53:00.000-07:00

1. What was the inspiration for Safe At Home?

It was an accumulation of three things, really. First of all, a few years ago, Major League Baseball celebrated an anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s life. I don’t remember if it was his birth or death or signing with the Dodgers, but it piqued my interest and motivated me to explore what he’d gone through.
Second, every summer my wife, Sally, and I take a minor league baseball trip. We usually catch three or four games in Greenville, South Carolina; Asheville, North Carolina; Columbus, Georgia; or Lexington, Kentucky. We love the Atlanta Braves, but there’s something especially charming about minor league baseball. You’re close to the players, the people, the promotions, sometimes even the food is homier than you find in the big leagues. It’s a much more intimate experience—the kind baseball fans truly savor.
The third piece of the puzzle fell into place during one of these swings. About five or six years ago we were at an arts festival in Asheville, North Carolina. At one of the vender stations, a young African American couple there was selling items commemorating the Negro leagues—photographs, plaques, T-shirts, and more. Some of the items displayed the logos for the Detroit Stars, the Homestead Grays, Indianapolis Clowns, Kansas City Monarchs … and it all was signed with the vendor’s tagline: “For the brothers who played, but didn’t get paid.” If I recall, a portion of the profits went to a group who provided for Negro league players and their families.
Those things came together and got me thinking about black players breaking the color line, and about what that might have been like in the more intimate venues of minor league baseball. And then, once I came across a few good source materials, I became fascinated with writing a story about this volatile time in history.

2. Tell us about your relationship with baseball when you were growing up. Are there any similarities between you and the characters in Safe At Home?

Actually, I didn’t become a baseball fan until I was an adult.When Sally and I moved to Atlanta in 1989, neither of us was a knowledgeable fan. But being in a major-league city for the first time (the Braves barely qualified then; they were 63-97 that year and finished last in the division), we thought we ought to have the experience. We went to a few games and started listening to the Braves broadcasters: Don Sutton, Pete Van Wieren, Skip Caray, and then, a season later, Joe Simpson. The chemistry between these guys was infectious. They were likeable, and play by play, situation by situation they taught us all about the game.

Then, in 1991, the Braves made their improbable charge from worst to first. They were one game behind the Dodgers (the Braves were in the West Division back then) going into the last week of the season, and hysteria gripped the city.We were glued to the TV every night. The iconic tomahawks could be found everywhere—on mailboxes, attached to skyscrapers, dangling from car antennas. The whole city stayed up late waiting for scores from L.A.
Sally and I went to the next-to-last game of the season. It was October 5. David Justice, our right fielder, caught the final out in a 5-2 win over Houston. Nobody in Atlanta will ever forget Greg Olson, our catcher, leaping into John Smoltz’s arms. The Braves had clinched a tie for the N.L. West. But then the strangest thing happened: The players stayed on the field. The fans stayed in their seats. The coaches, the vendors, the announcers—everybody stayed. Together we watched the end of the Dodgers/Giants game on the JumboTron (or whatever it was called then) in center field. When the Giants beat the Dodgers, there was jubilation at the old Fulton County Stadium.
We’ve been serious fans since that day, but our affection for baseball is a direct result of the Braves announcers. Pete Van Wieren, the professor; Skip Caray, the crusty curmudgeon; Don Sutton, the patient teacher who has something nice to say about everybody; Joe Simpson, the average player who relates to every man. They were always welcome guests in our home. Before the 2007 season the television networks busted up this team. We’re still grieving.

3. What surprised you most as you did research for this book?

Here’s the first and least surprising answer: Anybody, from the perspective of the early twenty-first century, is shocked by the fervency of segregationist attitudes. Looking back to this time, you have to be astonished by the fear of white southerners, by the apprehension and paranoia following the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The language, attitudes, and anger—is beyond our imagination today.
The other thing that surprised me was the patience and good nature of the black players of the era. Many of them consciously and deliberately modeled Jackie Robinson. I believe they had some vague notion that they were engaged in something bigger, something that transcended baseball. They persevered for unselfish reasons. They persisted, not only for their love of the game, but for the greater good of society.
A third thing that surprises me is how far we’ve come. The segregationist attitudes that existed just fifty-plus years ago were so extreme, so rabid, that it’s hard to look at that time and compare it to now. Today I walk my dog through our Atlanta neighborhood and pass and wave to black neighbors and think nothing of it. But not so, fifty years ago. Some of those who read early versions of the manuscript commented on how hard the story was to read. They had forgotten (or had never known) what things were like in that era. We’ve got a long way to go in race relations; it is still, perhaps, the defining issue of our country, and we remain, largely, a segregated society. But we’ve come a very long way, and I think that gives us reason to hope for the future.

4. How would you describe the intersection of faith and life in this story?

In the course of the story, Jack reflects on his situation and surmises, “It’s hard to have faith in chance.” He’s acknowledging the fact that there’s always more to a situation than meets the eye. Throughout this story Jack and the other characters are wrestling with the truth that all things, even those we don’t understand, those that have no hint of redemptive purpose, must ultimately work for good. And the working out of that good takes place in and through the lives of ordinary men and women.
Another thing we see in the story is the corruption, not just of people, but of the “powers and authorities” of the world. Jack and Rose Marie and Bud and Burt—all the characters in the story, and all the people who grew up in that time—none of them knew a society that wasn’t segregated, that wasn’t, fundamentally and essentially, unjust. The culture and society were flawed, and the people were a product of that impersonal, cold, inflexible system.
As we’re doing this interview, I’m working on a sequel to the story. In the next book Jack befriends Martin Luther King Jr. During the Montgomery bus boycott, Jack asks King about timing. He wants to know “why now?” Why, when the buses have always been segregated, is this the time to take action? King explains (and the dialogue is based on his actual words) that when the system itself is flawed, when institutions have veered from the path of righteousness, we’re compelled to act. He tells Jack that Christians, when they see powers and authorities behaving in ways God didn’t intend, have a duty to respond.
That’s what’s going on in Safe at Home—ordinary men and women are coming to grips for the first time with a crooked system, and slowly, through the actions of their ordinary lives, transforming it, realigning it, making things as they ought to be. In this story we get a glimpse, I hope, that it is our relationships, our mundane interactions, our conduct—with teachers, repairmen, checkout cashiers—that are the means by which the world is transformed, renewed, and redeemed. In this make-believe story we also discover the truth that no-name players in anonymous cities have been an intricate part of God’s plan to redeem the world.
And by the way, I love the fact that this is still occurring in baseball. Look at the starting lineup of most teams today. You’ll find white guys, black guys, Asians, and Latinos playing side by side. In a spot here and there, you’ll also find Australians and Canadians. Baseball, at least this facet of it, is a great example of healthy, productive diversity—of one (team) from many (ethnicities and nationalities).

5. What do you hope readers will take away from reading Safe At Home?

Most importantly I hope that when they come to the final page, they’ll be able to honestly say, “Now that was a good story.” I want readers to care about Jack and Rose Marie and Chris. I want them to pull for Percy and empathize with Walter and Roberta. I hope, in some vicarious way, readers struggle alongside Burt and Joe. And I even hope they understand what’s going on in Bud’s mind.
It would thrill me to know that readers were anxious to pick up the book and continue from the last turned-down corner, eager to see what happens next, and then, when they came to the end, to be disappointed that it was over.
Beyond that I hope they come away with some appreciation for what anonymous people living regular lives accomplished through the sport of baseball … one small town at a time.

6. What has been the most rewarding aspect of writing? The most challenging?
The most challenging part is, to the extent of my limited ability, to make full and beautiful use of the English language; to take the twenty-six letters of the alphabet and sculpt them, word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, into a narrative that’s delightful to read, that might, if I’m extraordinarily lucky, cause someone to read a sentence twice just because it’s so darn pretty. You can’t have a good story without strong characters. You can’t have a compelling narrative without an engaging plot. But what I love most is our language, the sound of the words rolling off the tongue, a rhythm and cadence that ensnares the reader; that’s enchanting and addictive.
And the most rewarding thing? To go back and read a paragraph for the fiftieth time and still think to myself, Not bad … not bad at all.

Discussion Questions for "Safe at Home"

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Gather your friends together to talk about the themes and characters in Safe at Home. Use these questions to spark a lively discussion.

1. From the very first sentence this story asserts that baseball played (and still plays) a significant role in shaping our culture. What was your immediate response to this claim? Did your response change as you read the story? Explain.

2. What surprised you most about this depiction of the South in the 1950s?

3. There is a lot of talk about keeping the “status quo” late in the story. How is this sort of thinking still prevalent today?

4. What were your initial impressions of Jack Hall? How did they change over the course of the novel?

5. How is the relationship between Jack and his son, Chris, like that between Walter and his son, Percy?

6. What did you like most about Rose Marie? Least?

7. What role does Roberta’s relationship with her son, Percy, play in the growth of Rose Marie’s character?

8. Why were so many people in Whitney reluctant to change with the times?

9. Which scenes in the novel prompted your most visceral reactions? Which scenes broke your heart? Which scenes gave you hope?

10. What do you think was Jack Hall’s greatest struggle in this story?

11. How does Jack’s faith play into the decisions he makes?

12. Are there redeeming qualities beneath the overt racist surface in characters like Bud? What are those qualities?

13. What role do you think baseball, and sports in general, played in the civil rights movement that followed the time period depicted in this book?

14. All of the characters in this story (as in life) are flawed people. Describe some of the good/bad traits of the main characters. How are you like and unlike these people?

15. Which character did you relate to the most? The least?

16. How is the church depicted in this story? What are the similarities between Jack’s pastor, Alan Spencer, and the Jacksons’ pastor, Phil Edwards?

17. What was your emotional response to Pastor Spencer’s sermon on the “Good Samaritan”? Why do you think a message like this didn’t have a greater measurable impact on the issue of racism in America?

18. What will you remember most about Safe at Home?

19. The character growth in Percy’s teammates is significant.Why do you think they were more readily able to embrace equality than the rest of the townspeople? What does this say about the factors that most significantly prompt necessary change in society?

20. What was your reaction to the way the story ended? In what ways is it a sad ending? In what ways is it hopeful?

2009-07-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Leave a comment by August 9th for the chance to win a copy of
Zora and Nicky, by Claudia Mair Burney.

Scroll down for book discussion questions and an author interview.

A Conversation with Claudia Mair-Burney

2009-07-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

Zora and Nicky is about two of the subjects held most sacred in America: race and religion. How do you see racism reflected in our culture and the church today?

I think racism is alive and well in America in both blatant and subtle ways. How could it not be? We’ve got a painful legacy to contend with—the shared soul wounds inflicted on us through the experience of chattel slavery. I’m forty-three years old. If my great-grandmother could tell me stories about her mother being greased and placed on an auction block, we aren’t far removed from the horror of those days.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour in Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” I don’t see that things have changed much. If I go to my black church, I’m comfortable. Everything is familiar—the music, the preaching style, even the way we worship. I’m not a minority there. It’s the same for white Americans. Go to a predominantly white church and you’re likely to have a distinctly European experience of church. I’ve gone to several predominantly white churches where I never saw a black person on the ministry staff or heard a black gospel song during worship. I was completely excluded culturally.

It wasn’t intentional; it just showed what was culturally important to them, what was comfortable. I’ve seen these same church leaders deeply hurt that black people would not come and stay. I know why they didn’t stay. It’s because they didn’t find anything there for them. They had a European church experience in those churches, and they weren’t European.

Doing what is familiar isn’t inherently wrong, but it keeps us separate. We don’t have to deal with the messy issues of our biases when we stay with the people most like us. We don’t have to confront our fears, or our hate. But it’s still there, and until we can meet at the foot of the cross and say, “I’ve got this wound, but I’m willing to give it to Jesus to heal,” and then say to our brother or sister who is not like us, “Hey, show me your wound and we’ll take that to the cross too,” we aren’t going to make any progress.

We also have to make a commitment to stop hurting one another. And we must create safe places to share our pain, fissures, and scars, or we won’t take that risk. And it is a risk. That’s why so many of us are trapped in our little segregated dead ends, every bit the pious deniers, which in many ways, is not much different than being pious liars.

Can you tell us a bit about your faith background?

In a word, my faith background has been messy. I started off having my “born again” experience at the age of fifteen in a fiery Church of God in Christ. From there I went to what is now called Word Faith or Word of Faith churches. I went to a variety of independent charismatic-friendly churches, black and white, some having very little accountability. I saw a lot of abuse during those years.

I left the church as a young adult. I did a lot of running from God. I chanted with the Hare Krishnas, wanted to be a whirling dervish, got all new-agey. I blew through a whole range of religious experiences seeking the love I’d left behind in Jesus. And then I spent years making my way back to Him. Although I’d returned, I was unable to articulate or honor the deepest longings of my heart, which I believe were put there by God. I wanted a very multicultural experience in worship, and I don’t mean only black and white together. I’m closer to having that now than I’ve ever been, but I’m not quite there yet.

Now I’m Eastern Orthodox. I like it because it’s pretty much the same everywhere. No matter what Orthodox church I go to, we’re going to be celebrating the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. It isn’t personality driven. You go to worship God and receive the sacrament of the Eucharist. We aren’t driven into emotional frenzies. We don’t have a preacher who is a superstar. It’s just one long prayer service until we receive the Body of Christ. I love it. It feels safer than the madness I’ve been through.

Zora and Nicky are both changed by what you would describe as incarnational Christianity. What does this mean to you? Is it something you’ve experienced in your life?

I got a real “incarnational Christianity” bug as I wrote this novel. I’d heard the term, but it didn’t click until I began asking myself questions as I wrote. What does it mean to have “this treasure in earthen vessels”? If I were to take being the body of Christ seriously, how would that affect how I lived? Christ loved. He healed. He delivered. I asked myself: How do people heal? How do they love through Christ? I put the characters in situations that challenged them to make Christ real to one another. For example, Christ is concerned about our needs. If we need clothing, He’s probably not going to drop a few outfits out of the sky. It’s more likely that He’ll provide through community. He provides for His body through His body. I believe if we caught on to this we’d change the world. People like Saint Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa of Calcutta changed the world through incarnational living.

I’m still trying to find my footing. This is all new and exciting, and it’s turned everything I thought I knew about being a Christian on its ear. I can’t be the same old self-obsessed, apathetic slug if it’s up to me to be Christ to “the least of these.” There goes my worldly ambition! My desire for success and fame falls to the wayside when I think of all the need out there. And it’s up to me to do something. So, now I say, “Amen!” I’m trying to empty myself like the Virgin Mary did and let the Holy Spirit fill me, and use me for service that goes way beyond what I thought I was capable of giving. But it’s still a challenge. It goes against the grain of all the selfishness I’ve absorbed because of the fall, because I’m American, and because I’m an unwitting victim of the disease of affluenza, no matter how much or how little money I possess.

Discussion Questions for "Zora and Nicky"

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1. Zora and Nicky meet at a home Bible study. What do they see reflected in this community that they haven’t found in their home churches?

2. Billie tells Zora that at the Beloved Community a stranger is someone who “is disconnected from love.” In what ways are Zora and Nicky strangers at the beginning of the novel?

3. Richard, the author of Good News for Rascals, Rebels, and Whores, is perhaps the most missional character in the novel. Do you think his brokenness makes him easier or more difficult to relate to?

4. When Nicky is struggling with feelings of lust, Richard tells him to think about whether the love of God wants him to defile Zora. What does this question say about the way that Richard views God? How does Richard’s perspective differ from the way Nicky views God?

5. Have you ever experienced a relationship or community where you knew that you were loved at the core of who you are, regardless of your past? If so, how did this knowledge change you?

6. Zora and Nicky are immediately attracted to each other. How does this initial attraction grow into a more mature love by the end of the novel?

7. Zora’s father doesn’t want Zora to lack for anything. How is this desire a reflection of his past?

8. The Sankofa bird’s head is turned back to symbolize that what we’ve lost is in our past, and only in going back can we truly go forward. How do Zora and Nicky come to terms with their pasts in this novel?

9. At the beginning of the novel, both Zora and Nicky are quick to point fingers at each other. How are they forced to confront the pride and racism in their own lives?

10.Do you think that racism is an issue in our culture today? In the church? Why, or why not?

Christy Award Winner!

2009-07-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

This week we're featuring Blue Hole Back Home, by Joy Jordan-Lake. Blue Hole Back Home won the 2009 Christy Award in the "First Novel" category. Congratulations to Joy (seen above with Dan Rich and Terry Behimer)!

2009-07-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

Leave a comment by July 19th for a chance to win
Blue Hole Back Home, by Joy Jordan-Lake.

Scroll down for an author interview, plus a Reader's Guide to the book.

A Conversation with Joy Jordan-Lake

2009-07-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

Blue Hole Back Home is inspired by a true story. How does this novel represent your own story, and what ultimately motivated you to write about it years later?

Honestly, I’ve felt haunted by this story.
All the characters in Blue Hole Back Home are purely fictional, as is the town of Pisgah Ridge, North Carolina, but the story has its roots in several incidents during my own teen years. One of these incidents involved a family from Sri Lanka who moved to our all-white town in the mountains of East Tennessee. I grew up on Signal Mountain, a small town on top of Walden’s Ridge just outside Chattanooga. The Sri Lankan family’s daughter was about my age, a year behind me in our high school down in the valley, and we became friends. She was beautiful, small-statured and had the thickest, black hair and a smile that knocked you clear off your
feet.
I remember her explaining to me that her family had moved to the U.S. because her father was convinced that America was “the end of the rainbow.” She just beamed when she said it, so full of trust and excitement. And I recall even then being uneasy. They were the only dark-skinned family living on our mountain, and my friend seemed happily oblivious to the fact that perhaps not everyone thought it was just peachy she and her family had moved to our town. She began attending my church—and in fact, the church still has some old photographs someone snapped of a group of us teenagers together. So far as I know, she was accepted there, at least, without question. Her family had come from a Muslim background in Sri Lanka, but they weren’t practicing Muslims, and I’m guessing her father allowed her to become involved with a Christian church because it seemed the American, and certainly the Southern, thing to do in order to fit in.
Then one night my father announced he’d been notified that the Klan was burning a cross on the family’s front lawn, and he was rushing there to be with my friend and her family. He and I have different memories of what happened next: whether I went with him that night or desperately wanted to and wasn’t allowed. I don’t suppose it matters at this point, nearly thirty years later, which one of us is right. At any rate, here’s what I recall of what actually happened: the Klan had, in addition to burning the cross on the lawn, also shattered the plate-glass window in front of the house, and burned the family’s car—and generally destroyed, of course,
any sense of welcome or safety. In the midst of that night’s terror, my friend’s father turned to my dad and asked, “Which way is Mecca? Please, can you point me toward Mecca?”My father pointed him toward the east, and then knelt beside him to pray.
Immediately after the cross burning, the family decided to move to Washington, D.C., where my own family had moved from ten years before. And when I stood there saying good-bye to my friend, she looked me in the eye and, with tears streaming down her cheeks, demanded, “We thought America was the end of the rainbow—we believed it. Explain this
to me.”
And you know, I’d like to tell you that I made an inspiring little speech that revived her faith in God and in the United States of America—with freedom and justice for all—and that I exchanged addresses with my friend and that we’ve been close to this day, emailing and text messaging regularly. The truth is, I have no idea what I said in that moment as we stood there as frightened teenagers. I just remember being so rocked by the whole thing, so embarrassed, so inadequate to say anything even remotely helpful. I never saw or heard from her again.
So maybe that’s why I initially wrote a short story about it that was included in my first book, Grit and Grace. The book editor for the Chattanooga newspaper suggested in her review of Grit and Grace that I should consider making a novel of that story, “Blue Hole.” And I thought, “Yeah, she’s right. I’d like to do that. I’d like to have another chance to say, through fiction, what I wish I’d actually said to my friend back then.” So even though it took me years to get around to writing the novel, maybe I’ve been trying to get it right all along, trying to make the story turn out differently, with more closure, more healing, more hope.
Interestingly, though, even in writing what I’d intended as a more hopeful version of the story than the reality, things in the fictionalized world still refused to tie themselves neatly into a bow of perfectly resolved reconciliation. Maybe life is just more open-ended and complex
than that. One of my editors with this book, Nicci, who was fabulous to work with, found it disturbing, I think, that justice isn’t really served at the end of the novel—nobody really gets nailed for Jimbo’s death—and she leaned on me a little, appropriately so, to make things happen more justly. I took her input seriously, and just couldn’t do it. Maybe something inside me kind of rebelled—maybe, not consciously, but maybe I couldn’t because historically so many African-American deaths resulting from race crimes went so utterly unpunished.

Any idea what happened to the Sri Lankan girl of your actual experience?

Over the years, I’ve tried to find her a number of times, but so far haven’t a clue. I changed her name for this book to protect her and her family, and also because the fictional Farsanna figure is only inspired by my friend, not a replica. Still, it’s occurred to me to dream: wouldn’t it be incredible if somehow, someone who knows her now and knows something of her early days having settled in the mountains of East Tennessee….What if this someone stumbled across Blue Hole Back Home and gave it to her—and we had a chance to reconnect. The possibilities are more than a little remote, I realize, but wouldn’t that make quite an afterword for a later edition…. An afterword, perhaps, more valuable than the story itself.

Your novel involves the Ku Klux Klan and racism in America in general, and evidence that it still exists today.What specific bits of history are particularly relevant to Blue Hole Back Home? How did that history drive your characters and storyline? What did your personal experiences teach you about such discrimination?

In addition to the cross-burning, other elements in the novel that were inspired by actual events, and that occurred during this same time period, the late 1970s and 1980, include the Ku Klux Klan roadblock and the downtown shooting spree that injured several African-American women.
During the eight or so years that I lived as a young adult in Boston, if I ever ventured to tell my Northern friends any of these stories, they looked at me like I must be about a hundred and twelve years old. They were convinced that the South remained an illiterate, racist backwater, but it still struck them as utterly impossible that someone my age (I was born on the last day of 1963) could have seen an actual Klansman anywhere outside a history book, or known anyone whose yard had been the site of a burning cross.
The novel’s scene with the KKK road block was inspired by one my family ran into driving back from swimming on the back side of the mountain. My father was driving. To that point, I’d never seen the Klan in person before, and I recall when we saw these figures up ahead all dressed in what looked for all the world like bed sheets and pillowcases, I thought it was a joke—until we got closer. And they were holding fast food chicken buckets. An utterly ridiculous image, you’d think. But there was nothing amusing about these guys. They were collecting money in the buckets, and they poked shotguns in the driver’s-side window to encourage contributions. My father declined to contribute.
At the time, it seemed only natural that he would calmly refuse— exactly what I expected, and I don’t recall being as terrified as I probably ought to have been. But as a parent now myself, I realize how frightened he must’ve been, not so much for his own safety as for the safety of his family there in the car. He was declining to contribute to guys who’d just shoved a shotgun muzzle into a car with his family in it. That had to have quickened the heartbeat a little.

And you mentioned the shooting spree was also inspired by actual events?

Right. The novel’s shooting spree down in the valley was inspired by an incident on April 19, 1980—again, while I was in high school. In response to some Klan members having met with leaders of the NAACP, three local Klan renegades who viewed this as evidence of the KKK’s becoming too soft, drove through an African-American section of downtown Chattanooga with one of the three guys shooting randomly at the sides of the street. One of these guys, I’m told, graduated from my high school, though several years before I did. I’m happy to say we’ve never
met.
Four African-American women were shot, though not killed that night, and a fifth was injured by flying glass from the blasts. Incredibly, two of the three men were acquitted, and the third, the one firing the gun, spent only nine months in prison. When the verdict from the all-white jury came down, the city’s African-American population erupted, quite understandably. Again, we were well past what could be considered even the broadest definition of the Civil Rights era, and yet here were these atrocities going essentially unpunished. I suppose it made an early cynic of me about racial hatred ever being entirely eradicated from any part of our country—and at the same time, made me someone who is doggedly, even unreasonably hopeful about the potential for individuals and towns and whole regions of the country to admit screw ups and tragedies and brutalities, and genuinely change.

What about one of the chief villains of the novel,Mort Beckwith? Any basis for him in real life?

Actually, yes. His first name is just a play on the French word for death, morte. But the last is a point toward Byron De La Beckwith, the assassin in 1963 of African-American Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers whom De La Beckwith shot in front of his home and then watched crawl, bleeding, dying, to his wife and children. De La Beckwith was set free in 1964 by two all-white juries in Mississippi who failed to reach a unanimous verdict. All this I knew, vaguely, from history courses. But in the 1990s when Ghosts of Mississippi came out in theaters, I was living in Boston and sitting by my husband watching the movie. In one pivotal scene, a central character insists that De La Beckwith has gone unpunished all these years, living free and easy up in his home on … and then the character’s voice rises to what I recall as a shout—Signal Mountain, Tennessee. Or maybe it only sounded like a shout because of its exploding inside my head.
So the man whom everyone knew was Evers’ assassin had been living on our mountain all those years and none of us knew it? And what was it about my beloved hometown that made it a place where he thought—or knew—he’d be safe, infamous as he was? I called every childhood friend I was still in touch with. Like me, this movie was the first any of them had heard of the fact. So if none of us knew as children or teens growing up there, and presumably none of our parents knew, who exactly did know? De La Beckwith apparently did begin to talk, even brag, about the murder.
Jerry Mitchell, an intrepid reporter for Jackson’s Clarion-Ledger, worked with Evers’ widow to re-open the case in 1989, and finally in 1994, to send De La Beckwith to jail, where he died of heart failure. But even now, if you look up my hometown on Wikipedia, it will tell you, essentially, that this is a remarkably beautiful place with a remarkably high average income level, and that it is the residence of Byron De La Beckwith. It’s so sad.
But this wasn’t ancient history—these were my growing up years. And I’m not entirely ancient yet, last time I checked. This wasn’t just any old racist, decrepit Southern town straight out of Faulkner’s fiction; it was our own peaceful, neighborly, dogwood-covered hometown. How could it be that I learned of this particular ugly secret of my hometown thanks to Hollywood speaking through a cinema in New England? Maybe that was when the incidents from my teen years, the cross burning and road block and shooting spree, began to strike me as more than a string of unrelated events.

How did the story behind Blue Hole affect your own journey of faith?

My teen and adult years have been a spiritual journey with plenty of ugly stumbles, but a journey, at least, of seeking God, of being, on my best days, knocked-over-grateful for grace. Looking back, I realize how formative—and maybe fragile—those early years were, in terms of forming some kind of idea of who God is and what God is about, and what a faith community ought to be. Although the church I grew up in was all white, I just naively assumed that when I
invited my Sri Lankan friend to church, she’d be warmly welcomed. And she was. There were rumors sometimes about someone or another in the church being known as a racist—this was a small town after all, and people knew things about other people, or thought they did. But my friend seemed to feel genuinely comfortable there. I suspect a number of people went out of their way to be sure she felt cared for and included. It didn’t seem particularly monumental at the time—and shouldn’t have, that a church would welcome anyone wanting to walk through its doors.

Wouldn’t that be precisely the point?

I imagine that if my hometown church had in any way rejected this Sri Lankan girl because of her skin color, lots of us my age would’ve rejected anything and everything the church tried to teach us from then on out.
Instead, despite what happened there on our Ridge with the Klan, at least this particular Southern church didn’t bolt its doors. The fictionalized church in the novel, though, I depicted more along the lines of how miserably so many other Southern churches behaved during the Civil Rights era, and years after. And the Baptist preacher of the novel, who is initially passive to the point of cowardice, is decidedly not based on my own father, who was our church’s pastor. One reason I probably pictured the good Reverend Riggs as a round, blonde, balding mouse of a man was that he was diametrically opposed to my own tall, darkhaired, slender dad, whom I watched over the years take a lot of heat for his position on any number of issues. If anything, the character of Reverend Riggs comes from my own fundamental tendencies to value harmony, as in the lack of conflict or turmoil, over just about anything. It can be a very dangerous trait, and one I’m forever learning to battle. By nature, I just want the lion to lie down with the lamb 24-7 and be chummy so I can relax and digest my food.
I was once privileged to eat dinner at the next table over from Archbishop Desmond Tutu—though he wouldn’t know me from the pork tenderloin that was served. He said in his speech that night that taking seriously the teaching of Jesus means becoming not peacelovers but peacemakers. There’s an enormous difference there, a difference that calls for active engagement on our parts, for speaking up. Which is why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” reamed out the “nice” white clergy of the South as being ultimately more harmful than the Klan: Letting things roll along for the sake of not upsetting the social order or disturbing anyone’s day can contribute more to the perpetuation of evil than all the blazing crosses in the world.
It’s a word I know I need to hear every day: Are there ways that even today my keeping my mouth shut on an issue—because I am so blasted conflict-averse—actually helped evil along on its way?

How are you like your Shelby? How are you different?

I’m certainly not Shelby, and Shelby is not me. I was never, for example, in love with a Jimbo. Shelby, though, is about the same age I was when my Sri Lankan friend moved to town, and like me at the time, Shelby is skinny and awkward, more comfortable with her brother’s friends than girls her own age. In my own early teen years, my own brother, David, let me run around with his buddies, who accepted me for no good reason other than that, I suppose, they respected my brother.
Maybe Shelby partially comes from the more cynical, skeptical side of me, the side of me that screws up and then refuses to feel forgiven. And I suppose I share in common with Shelby that while she is capable of being fiery and feisty, she can also clam up just when she ought to speak out— and she despises that about herself.

What about the Blue Hole itself, where the novel’s teenagers go to swim, and to be together and escape heat and the tensions of the outside world? Is there a real Blue Hole?

The Blue Hole of this novel is loosely based on two swimming holes in my hometown, one actually called the Blue Hole and another reached by a trail that descends sharply at Rainbow Falls near Signal Point. The natural beauty of the mountain is stunning. Now that I live in the
Southeast again, I love going to visit.

What do you hope most for your readers to glean from this novel?

I’d like to think that any story of bigotry or blind hatred or deceit reminds us of the ugliness any of us are capable of—not just actively perpetuating it ourselves, necessarily, but sometimes choosing to look the other way and let it continue. I also hope this is a story about the possibilities that always exist for complete and total transformation, against all the odds. The history of racism in the United States is a tragic one, no doubt about it. But I’m always fascinated by the individuals or groups along the way who, despite what they’d been taught to believe, despite how everyone around them behaved, held to an ideal of equality in God’s eyes, and couldn’t be shaken from that.

Why set the novel in the late 1970s, rather than, say, the ’60s, better known for racial turmoil?

For one thing, this was an era I remember well from personal experience, whereas I was a young child in the ’60s. And it was important to me to set this novel in 1979, at a time that was supposed to be safely beyond the horrors of slavery, or of early twentieth-century lynchings, or of midtwentieth- century legally segregated buses and sidewalks and school systems. The summer of 1979 was beyond that, yes—yet racially motivated ugliness was still far from underground. I hope this story suggests our taking a serious—and maybe intentionally skeptical—look at the not-so-distant past, and our own era.

You are a beautiful writer. Have you always been a writer? What turned you into a writer?

That’s awfully kind of you. I’ve wanted to write ever since I learned to read, I think. And the more I read, the more I wanted to write, and keep reading, and write better. I remember in fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Gross read aloud to the class a poem I’d written about having spotted a buck in the snow. Now, I don’t know that I’d ever seen a buck in the snow before, and it was probably an atrocious poem. But it was a turning point, letting my imagination create this scene, then creating that scene for a group of other people, and having the teacher hang up my poem for everyone to see. I was never the kid who could knock the kickball clear out of the field, so it was a real gift to be noticed that way. For days, I’d pass my poem hanging there on the bulletin board, and just couldn’t believe anyone else had taken notice of it, or that my words had actually connected with other people.
In fifth grade, my teacher Mrs. Buckshorn quietly left me an article on my desk one day and whispered, “This is for you to read when you grow up and become a writer.” I don’t know that I’d told anyone about wanting to be a writer, and I’ve always been pathetically insecure, so, again, her insight was an enormous affirmation.
I have times of wishing I didn’t enjoy writing so much, since unlike lots of other professional endeavors, there’s not necessarily a direct correlation between how much time you put in and how far you get in the field. I enjoy teaching on the university level, too, and I often try to convince myself that since I dedicated all those years to gathering the proper credentials, I should simply, and only, teach. But teaching, if you try to do it well, often crowds out time to write, and I become…well, out of balance, off kilter with the universe when I can’t write. I just want to snarl and snap at anything that moves. So it’s probably best for all concerned that I try to write on a regular basis.

And what else have you written, and what intrigues you for future novels?

Blue Hole Back Home is my fifth book. I’ve written a nonfiction book, Working Families, on navigating kids and career; a collection of stories, Grit & Grace; a collection of reflections, Why Jesus Makes Me Nervous; and an academic book, Whitewashing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that looks at nineteenth-century women novelists’ responses to Harriet Beecher Stowe. That era, nineteenth-century America, continues to fascinate me.
I’ve worked off and on for several years on a trilogy of novels set in Charleston, South Carolina, and Boston, Massachusetts, during the Underground Railroad, and I’d like to return to it as my next writing project. Or maybe on a contemporary novel set in Charleston….

Reader's Guide

2009-07-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

1. Discuss the scene in which Turtle urges Emerson to stop and pick up the new girl. Turtle quickly feels a hint of regret over her decision, though she couldn’t have predicted what it would eventually lead to.Why do you think she feels that twinge of regret so immediately? Can you recall any moments in your life which felt equally pivotal, and how did you react? What was the outcome?

2. Joy Jordan-Lake created a diverse and most memorable cast of characters. Who do you relate to most, and why?

3. Farsanna says, “In America, it is everywhere the land of opportunity, my father says … ‘It is the ... end ... of the rainbow.’” Farsanna’s journey in this novel reminds her and the Pack again and again about this rainbow. Discuss how this statement could take on different meanings for each character, and discuss whether you believe there was any rainbow to be found on Pisgah Ridge.

4. How did you react to the scene in Reverend Riggs’ church? What do you think is the appropriate reaction for faith-based communities in the face of similar situations, which may have nothing to do with race or ethnicity at all, but instead with differences of all kinds?

5. Mort Beckwith and Bobby Welpler are tragic characters in this story. What are the differences between them? In what ways do you relate to either of them?

6. How did you respond to the way the novel ended? Was what happened to Jimbo a surprise? And, how do you interpret the town’s reaction to his death or to the Moulavis’ departure from Pisgah Ridge?

7. Various characters in this novel have very different approaches to faith in God, from Shelby’s admitting, in response to seeing Mr. Moulavi at prayer, that “Religious practices of the truly faithful have always made me nervous—maybe because I’ve lived my life outside the glass with my nose pressed against it” to Jimbo’s dogged insistence on “scraps of the holy hoped for.” What accounts for the difference in the various characters’ approaches to faith or skepticism?

8. Do you believe any justice was served in Blue Hole Back Home? And was there any redemption to be found? How, and where?

9. Have you ever encountered discrimination the way the Mangy Pack did in Blue Hole Back Home? Did this novel stir up those memories for you, whether in a new—or old but still—powerful way? If you’re comfortable, tell your story.

10. Do you believe this kind of racially based hatred still exists today in America? If so, why? How do you think this story would be different if it occurred today?

2009-07-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

Post a comment by July 12th for a chance to win a free copy of

The King's Legacy, by Jim Stovall.

Scroll down for author FAQs and a biography of Jim Stovall.

Author FAQs with Jim Stovall

2009-07-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

Where did you get the idea for the story?
I got the idea for The King’s Legacy from some historical reading I was doing about the Middle
Ages. I have always been fascinated with this time period and thought it would be a great backdrop for sharing powerful lessons.

How do you write as a blind person?
As a blind person, I write by dictating to a very talented and capable person here in my office
named Dorothy Thompson. Other writers and editors are always shocked that we work this way, but through twelve books and over five hundred syndicated columns, it has come to feel normal for Dorothy and me.

How do you describe things you have never seen?
As a blind person, I am able to describe things I have never seen through the reading I have done. When I could read with my eyes as you are reading this page now, I never read an entire book cover to cover. But over the last twenty years as a totally blind person—thanks to a high-speed tape player and audiobooks—I consume, on average, one book each day. Reading has taken me to times and places that I otherwise would never have known.

Are the characters and lessons patterned after things in your own life?
I think the characters and the lessons in The King’s Legacy do relate to my own life. I think all writers of fiction draw on people and experiences that they have encountered. The King’s Legacy is a work of fiction, but great people and great lessons have presented themselves
to me over the years, and I am pleased to share them in the form of this book.

About the Author

2009-07-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

Jim Stovall is a highly sought-after motivational speaker. Despite
failing eyesight in his teen years that ended in blindness, Jim Stovall
has been a national champion Olympic weight lifter, a successful
investment broker, and an entrepreneur. He is the cofounder and
president of the Narrative Television Network, which makes movies
and television accessible for America’s thirteen million blind and
visually impaired people and their families. Although NTN was
originally designed for the blind and visually impaired, more than 60
percent of its nationwide audience is made up of fully sighted people
who simply enjoy the programming. The network’s programming is
also available free of charge, twenty-four hours a day, via the Internet
at www.NarrativeTV.com.

The Narrative Television Network has received an Emmy Award
and an International Film and Video Award among its many industry
honors. NTN has grown to include more than 1,200 cable systems
and broadcast stations, reaching more than 35 million homes in the
United States, and is shown in eleven foreign countries.

Stovall joined the ranks of Walt Disney, Orson Welles, and four
U.S. presidents when he was selected as one of the Ten Outstanding
Young Americans by the U.S. Junior Chamber. He has appeared on
Good Morning America and CNN, and has been featured in Reader’s
Digest, TV Guide, and Time magazines. He is the author of previous
books titled You Don’t Have to Be Blind to See, Success Secrets of
Super Achievers, The Way I See the World, and The Ultimate Gift. The
Ultimate Gift has been made into a major motion picture by 20th
Century Fox starring James Garner, Brian Dennehy, and Abigail
Breslin. The sequel book The Ultimate Life is now available and is
currently in development for what, hopefully, will be a sequel movie.
The President’s Committee on Equal Opportunity selected Stovall as
the 1997 Entrepreneur of the Year.

In June 2000, Stovall joined notables such as President Jimmy
Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Mother Teresa when he received the
International Humanitarian Award.

2009-06-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Post a comment by July 5th for the chance to win a free copy of Crossing the Lines, by Richard Doster.

Scroll down for the author interview and discussion questions.

An Interview with Richard Doster

2009-06-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

Your first novel, Safe at Home, dealt with the racial tension of the early 1950s in the setting of minor league baseball. This one follows that story chronologically, but is not set directly in the world of sports. What is it about this era in American history that keeps drawing you back?

This was a time when the country was fundamentally changed— when we saw righteousness confront evil—and righteousness won. It was a time when the courage of humble, anonymous, and powerless people overcame the self-interest of entrenched power. And it was the
era when our understanding of justice was challenged and redefined. In the Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln talked about a “new birth of freedom.” In many respects the civil rights era was, for people of every color, exactly that.

Both books feature “cameos” by historical figures. How did you go about researching their stories so you could present them in a believable light?

Well, I live in Martin Luther King’s hometown. I’ve been to his boyhood home several times, as well as to the civil rights museum that’s right down the road. I’ve roamed around Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father were copastors. I’ve been to Dexter Avenue Baptist and to the manse on South Jackson Street in Montgomery. These places are full of books, papers, documentary presentations, and important artifacts from the era. We have access to King’s speeches, sermons, and books. With a couple of clicks on YouTube, you can hear him speak, study his mannerisms, and be captivated by the rhythm of his oratory. So many of the people involved in this story left a thorough and very personal record. We have the columns and books written by Ralph McGill and Harry Ashmore—their firsthand testimony through which we sense the tension of the times. This is one of the most thoroughly documented periods of American history, and I live within a few miles of the research library at Emory University where, it seems, every article ever written is at your fingertips.

What surprised you most as you did your research for Crossing the Lines?

I came away from the research and writing with enormous gratitude for the way Martin Luther King Jr. changed the hearts and minds of America’s white population. Here are a couple episodes that illustrate what I mean:
Early in the book, when Jack asks King about the purpose of the Montgomery bus boycott, King tells him that he hopes to awaken a sense of moral shame. He explains that the effort is ultimately about fellowship. The aftermath of it, he tells Jack, is redemption and reconciliation—a redeeming goodwill for all men.
Most people, I suspect, think of “the movement” as being about rights for black people. I was surprised to learn that it was—thoroughly and from the very beginning—about justice for everyone. King’s concern was for a society in which every human could flourish. This twenty-six-year-old pastor recognized, in a thoroughly biblical way, the need for cross-cultural fellowship. He recognized that whites were just as impoverished as blacks by a segregated society. King saw that white people—especially those in power—needed to be freed from the restraints of a segregated society.
There’s a point in the story where King tells Chris Hall that he’s not interested in ending segregation. The goal, he says, is integration—the creation of a “beloved community” of all God’s children. King was always mindful that no one could thrive until everyone had equal opportunity.
Toward the end of the book, in Nashville, we see jailed black protesters refuse to pay bail, even after it’s been lowered to a token five dollars. Diane Nash, one of the black leaders, explains to Jack that their goal wasn’t to get out of jail; it was to transform an inequitable
society. To pay bail, she pointed out, would be to participate in—and thereby perpetuate—an inherently evil system.
Here again, the objective was all-encompassing. It was never about winning rights for a few, but rather, creating a righteous society for all.
I was surprised by the nobility of the movement, and by the courage of the people who took part. Looking back, I see something very Christlike about the whole campaign. There was an intentional way in which these people suffered on behalf of those who persecuted them. They were beaten, arrested, and verbally abused for the sake of their enemies. To win freedom for everyone, they strove to enrich the lives of those who hated them.
It’s interesting; this movement so thoroughly transformed American society, and yet it never insisted on a single fundamental change. Rather, it called on the country to embrace the principles of freedom and equality that it had always proclaimed. It simply asked Americans to be fully American. It didn’t demand that the church change; rather, it called on the church to embody the truths of Christ-centered community that it already preached. In other words,
it asked the Christian church to become more Christian.
To the extent that we still view this in black-white terms, it’s clear that white people were the primary beneficiaries. While the movement changed conditions for black people, it changed the hearts and minds of white people. Which gives us more to celebrate, and more to be
grateful for.
Many writers talk about novel writing as something of a discovery process—claiming the characters often take on a life of their own as they write. Did this happen for any of your characters, or did you know from the start how they would grow and respond throughout the story?

I don’t think any of the characters took on a life of their own, but I will say that character development in this story was … different. Fictional characters, like real ones, are defined by what they love and want most. We build characters around a single driving force and the tensions it naturally causes. But in this story the characters find themselves in this awkward, embarrassing in-between time. They’re proud Southerners, they have a stake in the “Southern way of life,” but the foundation’s cracking beneath them. They know that change is coming, but no one’s sure how to navigate through it.
There’s an episode where Flannery O’Connor talks about the “grotesque characters” of Southern fiction. She explains that Southern writers live in this chimerical, Christ-haunted territory—this place where they’re forever confronted with the region’s failings. As a result,
O’Connor explains, they, unlike writers from other regions, see the distance between “what is” and “what ought to be.” These characters embody that distance; they illustrate our deficiencies—as well as our longings.
The grotesque character of this story is racial segregation. I hope, through what’s depicted here, readers see our still-lingering biases, as well as an always-emerging hope for the “beloved community.”

The novel doesn’t hide the ugly truths and the frequent missteps that marked the beginning of the civil rights movement, but it also presents a different picture of the South—a hopeful, culture-rich picture. What inspired you to capture both of these aspects of the South in the 1950s?

I needed to capture both because there’s a direct connection between them. And in the connection, there’s a vivid picture of our humanness: we’re brilliant, creative, and high-minded one moment—evil, oppressive, and hypocritical the next.
It’s hard to believe that in the same era (generally speaking) when Faulkner was crafting works of genius, Martin Luther King Jr. was pleading for racial reconciliation. During the days when Sam Phillips was inventing rock and roll, when he was introducing the blues to a whole new audience, producing the music of B. B. King, Howlin’ Wolf Burnett, Ike Turner, Jackie Brenston, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley—black students were being jailed for ordering coffee at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. As Flannery O’Connor penned enduring works of fiction, Georgia governor Marvin Griffin was vowing to stop the 1956 Sugar Bowl, to prevent Georgia Tech from playing a Pittsburgh team that fielded one “Negro” player.
This was an era when Southerners were, at the same time, creating the very best of the world’s culture—and the worst. And the fact is, we’d have never had the one without the other. We now realize that:
• It is because of our once segregated society that we now
know the thoughts and theology of Martin Luther King Jr.
• It was a long history of racial oppression that gave birth to
the blues.
• Without a history of racial strife, we would never be enriched
by the “Christ-haunted” and guilt-inspired fiction of so
many great Southern writers.
The worst of Southern culture spawned the best. This is the paradox that sends Jack Hall down a career path he never envisioned.

What do you hope readers walk away with after reading Crossing the Lines?

I always want people to walk away with an enjoyable reading experience. I want them to be delighted with the language—with its power to draw us into a story and stir our emotions.
Beyond that, I hope readers come away admiring the courage of Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis, Dian Nash, and hundreds of others who were responsible for the civil rights movement. And I hope they come away inspired—eager to create in their own neighborhoods and cities, with whatever tools are at hand—something that comes close to the biblical ideal of the “beloved community.”

Will you be revisiting the Hall family in any future novels? What writing plans and dreams do you have now that Crossing the Lines is on the bookshelves?

I don’t have any plans to revisit the Halls, but … you never say never. Right now I’m working on a story about a young woman—a singer from rural Georgia—who’s forced to contemplate the purpose of her extraordinary talent; to figure out why it’s been given to her, how it’s to be used, and the implications of fame and celebrity. We’ll see where it goes.

Discussion Questions for "Crossing the Lines"

2009-06-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Use these questions to discuss Crossing the Lines in a reading group or simply to explore the story from a new perspective.

1. Describe the emotional “ride” you took as you read Crossing the Lines. What surprised you most as you read the story?

2. In what ways did you identify with Jack? With Rose Marie? Chris?

3. How did the story inspire you? Challenge you?

4. What about the characters or story made you angry or upset?

5. Although the novel is fiction, it’s based on true events and real people. How does this impact your reaction to Crossing the Lines?

6. How did the main characters grow as the story progressed? Who grew the most? What were the events that prompted that growth?

7. Which of the iconic characters in the novel did you find most compelling? According to the novel, what are some of the lasting effects of their influence? How does this compare to what you know of their actual stories?

8. What was your reaction to the ending of the story?

9. How did this story affect your view of the South during that turbulent time?

10. In what ways (if any) has this story changed you?

Winners!

2009-06-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Jenny and Sheryl, who both won a free copy of You Make Me Feel Like Dancing. Check back later today for the next book we're featuring!

2009-06-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

Post a comment by June 28th for a chance to win a free copy of You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.

Scroll down for discussion questions from the book.

Discussion Questions for "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing"

2009-06-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

You Make Me Feel Like Dancing is the first of three novels in the Va
Va Va Boom series. The “boom” refers to the baby boomers, people born
between 1946 and 1964. Baby boomers today, of which approximately
38 million are women, represent 28 percent of the U.S. population.
Boomer women are some of the healthiest, wealthiest, and best-educated
women ever to hit midlife. Identified by the National Association of
Baby Boomer Women as “faithful, loving, and hardworking women
who multitask to survive,” members of this powerful sisterhood hail
from various backgrounds and carry different baggage, but most share
the desire to make a difference. It is for this stalwart demographic of
vibrant women who want to make a difference that the author has
written the Va Va Va Boom series. She welcomes you to discuss the
questions below in your book clubs and to communicate directly with
her via e-mail at AB@AllisonBottke.com.

1. What are some of the major themes of the book? Did the author
effectively develop these themes? If so, how?

2. Is there anything in this story to which you can personally relate?
Did you find yourself identifying with a particular character or
characters? (You don’t need to be a baby boomer to enjoy the
story!) Are there any ideas or advice you can apply to your own
life?

3. Brought together in an online community known as Boomer
Babes Rock, Susan, Patricia, Mary, and others form fast
friendships even though they live in different parts of the
country and lead completely different lives. Do you believe the
close online friendships the author has described are likely or
possible? What kinds of benefits or problems could stem from
this special kind of relationship?

4. How important is the setting to the story? Did the setting of the
novel detract or add to your enjoyment of the story? Did it raise
any questions or concerns?

5. How effectively does the author portray the presence of
spirituality in the characters’ everyday lives? Has she succeeded
in presenting faith in a way that feels relevant and relatable? Are
there specific characters whose beliefs resonate with yours?

6. One of the issues Susan faces in parts of this book is the tension
of living “in the world” but not being “of the world”—that is,
living in her culture without compromising her beliefs and being
a credible witness to those who might not share those beliefs.
Her particular “world” is flashy Las Vegas and the glitzy disco
culture. Do you think she did a good job of living out her faith
in that world? In what ways have you felt a tension between your
faith and the culture you live in?

7. At several points in the novel, we see Susan wrestling with the
ability to communicate openly with her husband. How does this
issue apply to the story? How does it apply to your life?

8. Susan had the opportunity to fulfill one of her most important
dreams, yet she was prepared to sacrifice that dream to save her
marriage. Have you ever been called to sacrifice a cherished
dream? Describe the experience and what (if anything) you
learned from it.

9. The first three books in the Va Va Va Boom series feature Susan,
Patricia, and Mary—three baby boomer women who are living,
loving, and enjoying making a difference in their world. From
what you have read so far, where do you think the author
will take these women in subsequent books? What aspects of
their experience are specifically “boomer” and what are more
universal?

10. Each lead character in the Va Va Va Boom series owns her own
business, representing a unique generation of women who
have made choices to survive and thrive in sometimes difficult
circumstances. Discuss some of the challenges Susan faced as a
business owner and Loretta experienced as an employee.

11. Money plays a significant role—both positive and negative—in
this book. What are some of the money issues that arise between
Susan and Loretta, Susan and Michael, Susan and Lily, Ryan and
his father, and others? How have money issues affected your own
life and relationships and your spiritual journey?

12. Susan is a passionate, loving, faithful, trustworthy individual
who, at midlife, is suddenly faced with making a choice destined
to send her on an unexpected journey. What other choices could
she have made? Have you ever been faced with the need to make
a life-changing choice?

13. Susan had a painful secret in her past that held her prisoner for
years. How would things have been different if she had fully disclosed
everything to Michael years before? How can secrets hurt
a relationship? Is there ever a time when maintaining a secret is
the best thing to do?

14. What are your thoughts about Susan’s decision to not look for
her daughter and about Michael’s choice to find her?

15. Story lines within the Va Va Va Boom series will address timely
issues of special interest to the baby boomer demographic such as
empty nesting, aging parents, menopause, divorce, widowhood,
retirement, sexuality, Alzheimer’s, drug-addicted adult children,
grandparenting, adoption, sexual abuse, bankruptcy, adultery,
health, post-abortion stress syndrome, and more. Which of
these issues would you most like to see the author address in
subsequent books? Why?

16. What did you like or dislike about the book that hasn’t been
discussed already? Were you glad you read this book? Would you
recommend it to a friend? Do you want to read more works by
this author? Why or why not?

2009-06-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

Post a comment by June 20th for a chance to win a free copy of Talking to the Dead.

Scroll down for an interview with Bonnie Grove and book discussion questions.

An Interview with Bonnie Grove

2009-06-15T09:02:00.000-07:00

In a charming outdoor bistro in Italy, a smiling woman sighs over
the perfect espresso and gazes out toward the Mediterranean.
Unfortunately, this isn’t Bonnie Grove, who has never visited Italy
nor laid eyes on the Mediterranean. In order to chat with Bonnie
we must zip our down-filled parkas to the chin and trudge headlong
into the northern winds to Canada. We find her huddled near the
fireplace inside a Starbucks gulping a mochaccino and waving a pen
high above her head. “Anyone have a rhyme for ‘igloo’?” she hollers
into the crowd. She tosses the pen down. “Yeah, me neither. This is
why I don’t write poetry.”

AfterWords Interviewer: So you’re no Sylvia Plath wannabe. We can live with that. Tell us, why do you write?

Bonnie Grove: Oh man. I KNEW you’d ask that. I keep thinking I
need to come up with a really good answer for that question. It’s on
my to-do list.

AW: Uh … so you don’t know why you write?

BG: Oh sure I do. I just don’t know the exact words to explain it.
It’s complicated. I didn’t start out to be a writer. I meant to be a
psychologist. That’s the road I was on when I started writing. What
drew me to psychology were the stories behind the human experiences.
And what drew me to writing is the human experiences inside
the stories. So, I don’t know if I’m a successful writer or a failed
psychologist.

AW: That’s tough. No wonder you write about mental breakdowns.

BG: Tell me about it.

AW: Still, your background in psychology must have come in handy while writing Talking to the Dead.

BG: Yes. I have a great deal of respect for the field. I’ve been privileged
to sit with individuals, couples, and families while they try to
put their lives into words; try to voice their experiences. In those
sacred moments, I have felt God’s presence so near, so immediate it
literally caused me to fall silent. And it’s that story—the story of God
present in our immediate turmoil that I wanted to tell.

AW: That’s why the tagline on your Web site is “Life is messy, God is love”?

BG: Exactly. Hey, if you order the pumpkin muffin, I’ll share it with
you.

AW: Uh, okay. Thanks, I guess.

BG: Anyway, yes. My life is messy (picks several pumpkin muffin
crumbs off her shirt). I bet you’ve had moments of mess in your life
too.

AW: Sure. We all have.

BG: Yep, we all have. I’ve left behind the notion that life should
be something else, something, I don’t know … perfect? Or neat, or
whatever it is. I’ve given myself full permission to shift through the
truth of my life. I tromp around in it, knowing God is there beside
me.

AW: So, is Talking to the Dead a work of fiction, or is it a fictionalized autobiography?

BG: It’s trickier to talk about than it seems. Kate’s story is a work of
fiction. I haven’t lived through any of the actual circumstances Kate
went through. So the short answer is: Kate is not me, and this is not
my story. But, on another level, we have all lived her experiences.
We’ve all lived through loss, grief, shame. It’s the journey toward
making sense of our lives, making sense of the bad. Is there such a
thing as an emotional autobiography? If so, I guess that’s what I’ve
written. Including the good parts, like forgiveness and love.

AW: Let’s talk about love. The romantic scenes in this novel are deeply affecting, without resorting to clichés or sentimentality. What’s your secret for handling the romance element in your novels?

BG: Love is lived out in the everyday. Sweaty palms and thrumming
hearts can only get you so far and while they are fun, they aren’t the
hallmarks of mature love. It’s important, when talking about love, to
get beyond the gooseflesh rush of passion and talk about long-haul
love. Kate and Kevin’s dysfunctional love had moments of brilliance.
It had to, or why would he hold such sway over Kate? And Jack’s love,
well, that’s love of a different kind, isn’t it? Steady, honest, transparent.
He is in my mind a model of a man of integrity in love. When
God is the center and source of your love, it can’t help but transcend
cliché and sentimentality.

AW: Where did the character of Kate Davis come from?

BG: Like most of this book, she came in bits and pieces at first. I
began with attributes I wanted to explore through story. Her feistiness,
her confusion, and her strong sense of irony were the first three
characteristics I knew she had going for her. In time, thank God,
she moved out of that two-dimensional world and became a three-dimensional
character. Her feistiness morphed and developed into
emotional intelligence, survival, and, ultimately, hope. Her sense of
irony brought moments of light and relief, and then, again led to
hope. It was her confusion that was most fun to work with. She
keeps having conversations she doesn’t mean to have. She goes into
something thinking she knows what she wants to say and what needs
to be discussed, but somewhere in the course of the conversation
she loses track of things and is left wondering, What just happened?
It was in writing the scenes involving Kate’s confusion that she came
fully alive.

AW: Alive? I’ve heard authors say sometimes their characters talk to them. Did that happen to you?

BG: Yes. It’s a bit strange, but I’ve come to understand it as two parts
of my brain talking to each other—a way to resolve dissidence using
picture and sound. But it’s fun. Kate was the character who spoke to
me most often. But Kevin and I had some difficulties too. Dead people
aren’t especially chatty—so getting into his head and writing him as
a fully alive person took effort. I was struggling with a scene and I
demanded, “Say something, Kevin!” and he said, “I’m too good for this
scene. Write a better one.” That’s when I truly understood him. And
yes, I wrote him a better scene. It was the only way to get him to talk.

AW: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

BG: A great reading experience—that may sound like “a given,” but
it was important to me to try to write a book people would want
to read—enjoy on several levels, so that is a huge hope. On top of
that, I hope the reader will let her imagination drift, allow herself
to ask questions of herself, her life, and in doing so discover just
how immediately close God is to her in that moment. That is where
clarity comes from.

AW: In her endorsement, Francine Rivers says, “It takes a gifted and intuitive writer like Bonnie to bring humor into the middle of such a serious story. She made me laugh in several of her scenes with ‘counselors’ and their philosophies.” How did you manage to bring humor into the story?

BG: First off, let me say I’m honored that Francine Rivers enjoyed
the book. I am a massive fan of hers and it is more than an honor that
she read the book and offered such a generous endorsement. But, to
answer your question about humor: Did you know there is an entire
field of psychology that looks at humor? How it works, what it does
for us, why we use it?

AW: Get out!

BG: True. Fascinating stuff. Two keys to the use of humor: type and
timing. You must use the appropriate type of humor that fits with the
situation. And your timing must be bang-on. You can’t fudge timing.
In this novel, I used humor to take the pressure off the reader, to help
her take a deep breath and relax before plunging in further. (Stuffs
more muffin in her mouth.) And that’s all I have to say about that.

AW: How do you write a novel?

BG: (between bites of pumpkin muffin) How do I write a novel?
I don’t think I’ve written enough novels to answer that question. I
know how I wrote Talking to the Dead, but I’m at work on a new
novel and the process is completely different. Maybe that’s the
answer—it’s different every time. Or, maybe after a few more, I’ll
have some concrete notion of how I write a novel. Truthfully, I hope
it’s the former.

AW: Did you say new book? What can you tell us about it?

BG: At the moment it is untitled but I fondly refer to it as Gabby
Wells: The Musical.

AW: It’s a musical?

BG: Ah, no. But it’s all the fun drama of a musical, without the
singing, or dancing. Or music. It’s the story of a women who finds
Jesus, begins reading the “red words” (words of Jesus) in the Bible,
and then is framed for murder.

AW: Oh my! That sounds—hey, you ate the entire muffin!

BG: Oh. I did, too … Sorry about that. If we get another one, I’ll for
sure share that one with you.

Group Discussion Questions for "Talking to the Dead"

2009-06-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

Here are some themes to consider:

1. Friendship. Maggie thrust hers onto Kate, Heather forged
an inappropriate one. Kate offers her friendship to Sekeena.
Examine the role friendship played in Kate’s unfolding drama.

2. Loss. Loss comes in many forms in Kate’s story. There are the
obvious losses brought by death, but there are many more.
Examine the levels of loss Kate experienced.

3. Mental health. Kate’s grief and guilt expressed itself in many
different ways. Examine the evidence that suggests Kate was
mentally ill, and the evidence that suggests she was mentally
healthy.

4. Love. Kate’s understanding of love changes throughout the book.
Love is expressed and rebuffed and rejoiced in at different times.
Examine the different kinds of love in the book.

5. Humor. Even in the throes of her sorrow and grief, Kate experienced
moments of quirkiness, of lightness, and even humor.
How was this accomplished in the book?

6. Therapy. Kate underwent several types of therapy. How did each
help her? In what ways did they fail to help her?

7. Faith. Kate wrestles with God. Jack’s faith inspires her, and The
Reverend’s faith frightens her. Explore Kate’s journey toward
faith—its small but important beginnings, to the end of the
book. What do you think about Kate’s faith experience?

2009-06-15T08:05:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to "Just Me" and "Sharon," who both won a copy of Scared in last week's giveaway!

Thanks to all who entered - check back later today for this week's featured book!

2009-06-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

Post a comment by June 13th for a chance to win a free copy of Scared.

Scroll down for an interview with Tom Davis and book discussion questions.

An Interview with Tom Davis

2009-06-08T10:04:00.000-07:00

Let’s get right to the big question: What was your inspiration for this
story?

Adanna’s story is based on a real story. The first time I went to Africa, I was constantly confronted with tragic real-life stories of beautiful children. It was unbearable. There was one little girl I met outside of the capital city of Swaziland; she had the most precious, innocent
face I’d ever seen. She was happy and filled with joy. Then the director of the orphanage told me her story. He said she was rescued from an abusive situation, although at first they didn’t know how badly.
They took her in and loved her as their own. She had the typical signs of neglect: filthy from head to toe; ratty, shredded clothes hanging from her body; and bruises and cuts from being hit with sticks and hands. The first day she was there, all the kids met together
in a group to play a game. When the game started, this little girl was unable to hold her bladder and had an “episode” in front of everyone. At first the teachers believed that she had never been potty trained. Day after day, the same thing occurred. They took her to a doctor and realized that the abuse was much more severe than they assumed. Both of her parents died from AIDS, then a distant uncle took her in. Her life was reduced to the life of a slave. She was forced to work fifteen hours a day, and her uncle sold her body to men in the community so he could have money for alcohol. Then he began violently raping her on a daily basis. Thus the reason for her incontinence.
Her story became the story of many little girls I met throughout Africa. It was more than I could handle. It still is. I was compelled to act and had to tell their story. I have to believe that as people read Scared, they will be moved with compassion and also compelled to act.

What other characters or circumstances are based on real life? Without revealing specifics (unless you want to), where did they all come from?

SPOILER ALERT
Almost every character in the book is taken from a real relationship I have with someone in Africa. For example, Pastor Walter is one of the people I admire most in Swaziland. He is a church planter who cares for hundreds of orphans in his community. I know that in times past, Walter has fed the many orphaned children he cares for while his own children have gone hungry. He’s an amazing man. The faith he has for God’s provision in his life surpasses mine in so many ways. He gives out of the very little he has, when it’s difficult for me at times to give out of my abundance. I remember when he told me about how he was called to care for all of these orphans in his village. He said that the Bible verse that kept ringing in his ear was James 1:27, “Pure and undefiled religion is taking care of orphans and widows in their distress.” So he said to God, “Hey, God, You know I am a poor man. Send me some wealthy people to help me.”
God’s response was immediate: “Listen, boy, put your hand in your own pocket, and give to them as I have given to you.” That’s what Walter did. Today, he cares for one thousand orphans
in eight different care points. He’s truly an inspiration to me. In fact if you visit www.ScaredtheBook.com, you can view a documentary on the life of the real Pastor Walter.
Some of the events are real. The story about the organization pretending to help people after the flood is true. African people have been used and taken advantage of in terrible ways—another reason why it’s so important that people who genuinely care get involved,
keep their word, and show them what love really looks like.

Clearly the themes in Scared are things you’re passionate about. What
drives that passion?

I believe everyone needs to know about the suffering the children in Africa endure. It’s the definition of injustice and shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the twenty-first century. I know this is difficult for people to hear. After all, nobody likes to feel helpless or guilty regarding situations such as this. I assure you that’s not my intention. But reality is reality.
What I want people to know is how easy it is for them to make a tremendous difference in the life of a child suffering in poverty. A mere five dollars can be the difference between life and death. That amount of money can provide life-saving malaria medicine, one hundred meals, or a mosquito net.
My passion is driven from the core belief that not only can everyone in the West do something to help children trapped in poverty, they must. God’s kingdom comes when God’s people tackle issues like these and change the circumstances because of their love. We are the answer, that’s why we must act.

This is your first novel. Describe the process you went through. What
did you learn along the way?

Grueling—that describes the process. I’ve written three nonfiction books to this point, and writing them came more naturally. Nonfiction tends to be more linear, which is how I’m wired to think. I’m so left-brained! Writing a novel was a completely different process. I paid the price for the years I didn’t pay attention in English literature and grammar classes in college and high school! I had to go back and relearn those English lessons in a very short period of time.
A novel is more like a tapestry. Every scene, every chapter, every word has to be woven together. And everything, and I do mean everything, has to be described. In nonfiction that’s not necessary, but in fiction it’s a must. What did I learn? I learned that anything is possible if you put all your heart, mind, and soul into it. Believe me, there were times when I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the finish line. There were days when nothing I was writing made sense, nights when nothing would come out right, and weeks when I couldn’t write because of my crazy
schedule. I probably wrote over one thousand typed pages just to get three hundred. Of course, I had the help of some brilliant people throughout the process, like Lisa Samson, Claudia Mair Burney, Moira Allaby, and Steve Parolini, who helped me chisel off the rough edges and
shape it brilliantly. In the end, I’m very pleased with how the novel turned out. It’s a difficult story, but one that focuses on the true meaning of life and where we all need to place our hopes no matter what country we live in.

How did the story change from your first draft to the published version?

SPOILER ALERT
There were several major changes that took place. One was Stuart’s character. At first, he was much more self-centered and egotistical; he wasn’t likeable at all. Don’t get me wrong; he of course still has many issues to work through in the first half of the finished book. His character was inspired by a man named Kevin Carter. You may not recognize his name, but you would know a picture he took. It was a photo of a little Sudanese toddler on the way to a food center who had fallen in the dirt. She was completely emaciated and obviously on the brink of starvation. In the background sat a well-fed, quite plump vulture waiting for her to die. It’s horrific. Well, Mr. Carter became famous for that shot and later won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Becoming famous for a photo like this, along with the evil and suffering he viewed through the lens of his camera was more than he could bear. He committed suicide about sixteen months after taking that photo. Here’s a portion of what he left in his suicide note:
“I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer
executioners.…”
Stuart was headed along the same path as Kevin, but the encounter he has with Adanna changes him. He undergoes a transformation that re-creates his values and his view on life, which turns him into a new man.
I also changed the number of tragedies that happened to Adanna. Sadly, what happens to her in the book happens to millions of children in our world today. It’s injustice of the worst kind. But I couldn’t do one more terrible thing to her; I couldn’t bear it. There was a scene were she had to sell her body for a loaf of bread to feed her brother and sister, but I took it out. The ending is completely different than I wrote it the first time. It was changed about three times. Previously, Adanna didn’t die. She became a bit famous for her poem and went throughout Africa speaking on AIDS and abuse. That was heartwarming, but it wasn’t reality. This ending is the right one. It fits. It hurts, but it fits.

You include a rather sly (and subtle) reference to Children’s HopeChest in Scared. Tell us more about that organization and your role in it.

Ha, ha, yes, very sneaky of me! Without a doubt, Children’s HopeChest is my passion. It represents what I will do for the rest of my life. I’ve seen this organization save the lives of so many widows and orphans around the world. The key for HopeChest is relationships. We want
to empower people to actively engage in the lives of the poor. The heart of HopeChest is to be the living reality of that James 1:27 passage I mentioned earlier: “Pure and undefiled religion is taking care of widows and orphans in their distress.” We do that by providing for their needs in five areas: physical needs, education, medical/dental, emotional, and spiritual. It’s a holistic, redemptive, long-term approach to care for orphans in a way that is practical. Our goal is to provide the necessary love and care to widows and orphans so they become leaders in their communities. They will be the generation that leads their countries out of poverty, death, and despair. That’s what we believe.
My goal is to connect everyone who has a heart for this kind of ministry to HopeChest in a way that transforms their life, and the life of the widow or orphan they touch. If you’re interested in engaging at that level, check out www.HopeChest.org or call or e-mail me!

What do you hope readers will walk away with after spending time
in Adanna’s world?

I hope through Adanna’s voice and life, readers are moved on such a deep level about the plight of orphans like her that they are compelled to act. There’s one startling truth I’ve discovered in helping the poor in our world, and it’s this: The difference between life and death for widows and orphans in our world is me and you. Seriously! As I’ve said, five dollars can be the difference between life-saving malaria medicine and death; it’s the cost to provide clean water to someone for a year; and it also can provide one hundred meals to orphans in Africa. Every single person reading this can do that.
I think it’s also healthy to walk in other people’s shoes. Scared provides the opportunity to do that. To see the world through the life of an orphan growing up in Africa, in the midst of complete destruction is alarming. I can’t help but to ask the question, what if it was me or my kids? What if we were the ones born in a different place? This is more than just being thankful to live in America. It’s about identifying with someone else’s pain and being moved with
compassion.
It’s my firm belief that God has already sent the answers to solve the world’s most difficult issues, and the answer is people like us getting involved. So take a step to help, just one, and it will change your life forever!

What are some practical ways readers can help the situation in Africa?

One, go to www.ScaredtheBook.com. There’s a contest going on right now that will help three incredible African orphans win the dream of a lifetime! An all-expense-paid education—primary school, secondaryschool, even college and university. Whenever I talk to kids in Africa, they always tell me their number one need is an education. Not food, not water. Why? Because they say that without an education, they’ll die anyway. On the Web site, you can be a part of fulfilling this dream and vote for the winner. This is a writing contest, and whoever receives the most votes will be declared the winner in each category: short story, memoir, and poetry. We are also raising a million dollars that will go in an education fund to help pay for thousands of orphans’ education. Check that out at www.OrphanEducationFund.org.
Two, you can help provide one hundred meals to needy orphans in Africa. How? Go to www.5for50.com. There are five practical steps listed that will help you really make a difference in the lives of the poor. We’ll even send you a free bracelet just for signing up. You can get my nonfiction book Red Letters: Living a Faith That Bleeds, and get educated about the problem so you can position yourself to make a difference.
My blog is another good resource, www.CThomasDavis.com. It has tons of links, stories, and resources to help you on your justice journey.
Last but not least, check out the Children’s HopeChest Web site, www.HopeChest.org. There you can sponsor a child, sign up for a trip, or find out how to be more involved.

Are there plans for more novels? Nonfiction works? What’s on the drawing board for the future?

Scared is actually the first book of a series I’m writing. The next book finds Stuart Daniels in Russia exposing one of the most villainous and evil industries on the face of the earth, the child sex-slave trade. This book is a thriller, keeping you on the edge of your seat from the very first chapter. It is a headfirst dive into the culture and history of Russia and includes a dangerous confrontation with the mafia in an attempt to free girls who are sex slaves. Stuart will be stretched more than ever. He goes underground in hiding at an orphanage and meets a little boy who is an artist and changes his life.
I’m also working on a nonfiction book that focuses on merging ancient Christian practices into our lives in a way that reveals the kingdom of God through everything we do. I’m very excited about both of these projects. Stay tuned to my blog to find out more about when these will release along with special contests I’ll be running and information about videos of Africa and Russia that helped inspire these books.

Group Discussion Questions for "Scared"

2009-06-08T10:03:00.001-07:00

Use these questions to discuss Scared in a reading group or simply to
explore the story from a new perspective.

1. What was your emotional reaction to the opening of this story?
Was it easy for you to read? Why or why not?

2. In what ways did you identify with Stuart? Adanna?

3. How did the story inspire you? Challenge you?

4. What about the characters or story made you angry or upset?

5. Although this is fiction, it’s based on real-life experiences. How
does knowing that Adanna’s story isn’t far from fact impact what you
take away from it?

6. What is the significance of the role Tagoze plays in this novel?
Why does he get a chapter of his own?

7. How do the various characters grow and change throughout the
story?

8. What was your reaction to the ending of the story?

9. How did Stuart ultimately use the gifts he had been given to make
a difference?

10. In what ways (if any) has this story changed you? What are some
practical ways you can make a difference in the lives of the Adannas
in our world?

And the winners are....

2009-06-08T07:52:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Ronie Kendig and Reborn Butterfly, who both won a copy of Breathe!

Check back later today for the next book we'll be featuring: Scared, by Tom Davis.

2009-06-01T13:05:00.001-07:00

Post a comment by June 6th for a chance to win a free copy of Breathe.

Scroll down for an interview with Lisa T. Bergren and book discussion questions.

An Interview with Lisa T. Bergren

2009-06-01T13:02:00.002-07:00

Q: You’ve written contemporary romance, nineteenth-century
fiction, general contemporary fiction, and a medieval suspense
series. Why return to the nineteenth century?

A: There is something intriguing and reassuring about the 1880s
to me. It’s both a vibrant time in the world with the Industrial
Revolution well under way, but also somewhat simple and
innocent, too. Sometimes I wish I lived in the 1880s, but
with a computer, vaccines, appliances, and indoor plumbing
everywhere.

Q: You’re a travel junkie. Why place this series in your Colorado
backyard?

A: People love Colorado. I love Colorado. It’s visually beautiful, of
course, and it’s been on my mind and heart to set a series here
for some time. And when I learned of how so many people
came to Colorado Springs to seek the cure for tuberculosis
(in the early years, about a third of our residents), I knew it
had to be here. But I have to say my eye is wandering back
toward Europe for my next series. Can’t keep me home for
long! I’ll stay put for Sing and Claim but then I’m outta here,
baby! Luckily, Sing takes place in the Sangre de Cristos and the
gold camps of Colorado; Claim will take place near Ouray—a
fantastic, gorgeous place to visit. And Moira and Nic are on the
move—around the world—so I can do some exploration, too.

Q: Your fascination with travel has even led to a new business,
hasn’t it?

A: A hobby, mostly. Tim and I launched a Web site with friends,
www.FamilyTripster.com, to encourage families to travel
together. We love hearing how other families manage it—and to
share tidbits on how to make it easier for all to navigate a city,
foreign or close to home.

Q: How much did you have to research for this series?

A: I read several books about the history of tuberculosis and many
first-person accounts. It’s a terrible way to die … a slow suffocation.
Then some general history books about the 1880s to
refresh my memory. And I always love the local books that have
pictures and accounts of our forefathers; it makes it come alive
for me.

Q: What did you learn about yourself in writing Breathe?

A: I love to learn along with my characters. It’s part of the ride as an
author. For me, the “aha” was the same as Odessa’s. I think that
I’m slowly coming to believe, understand, and embrace the idea
that God really does hold my life in His hand. And that’s okay.
I trust Him … so if He gives me another sixty years or sixty
seconds, I’m good.

Q: What are you working on next?

A: Sing, the next book in this series. And a couple of children’s
books.

Q: How can readers find out more about you and your work?

A: My Web sites: www.LisaTawnBergren.com; www.
BusyMomsDevo.com; www.GodGaveUsYou.com; www.
FamilyTripster.com are the best way. And if a reader signs up on
www.LisaTawnBergren.com to receive my monthly e-newsletter,
she’ll receive a new devotional each month inside it. My heart
goes into those, in between novels. You’ll get a glimpse of the
good, the bad, and the ugly in my life—and how Christ somehow
redeems it all.