When Running Means Staying
I wanted closeness with God. I wanted my calling and my role as a mom. I wanted faith so strong I’d run with the horses, but I also wanted to feel strong and capable.
Shaping My Story with Story
The Bennets proved to me that a writer need not be of the Jack London ilk. One might inhabit a small world, but a keen mind could expand even the most confined drawing room.
Letter From the Editor
This month, our Redbud writers share the books that have changed them. It might be one in particular, or it might be many that have shaped them over the course of their life. These stories are raw and revealing, transparent and touching. Hold them gently.
How a Duck Changed What I Saw
Grace might be hidden in disappointment. Love might be tucked beside loss. Goodness might be embedded in trials.
That Aroma Pervades Every Story
I cannot remember a time when the Bible has not had space in my daily life. Because of this it was a reality more than an influence.
How Pray Hear Write Transformed My Life
Writing as a vocation is not where I expected to be today, but I can confidently say that God has exceeded my expectations in redeeming my pain and causing my story seeds to grow.
A Mountain and 197 Miles of Mystery
Her mystery didn’t just change our experience at a historical landmark. It altered our experience of what it meant to wonder again, to rediscover, and to wander into adventure that we’d previously thought was only for the qualified few.
How Books Dared and Dragged Me Through Grief
I return again and again to The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed, though the latter is so raw, there are times I can barely read it. Lewis knew pain, and he didn’t put suffering in a theological box. Instead he left room for it to expand to its full reality and showed how even at its greatest, God’s reach was infinitely more.
Orchard Memories
Margaret Philbrick spent many summers playing tag in the cherry and apple orchards of northern Wisconsin. Her friend Julie grew up on one of those orchards and her life experiences of harvest and loss inspired this story. ******* Like most things it started with one. Grandma could never throw anything out. Like every Grandma in…
From the Editor
I’ve always loved a good story. I lived in my head a lot when I was younger, always forging stories about mysteries or romance or faraway places. From the time I was in middle school I knew that I wanted to write some of those stories. And then life interfered and, although I majored in…
The Heart of a Samurai
Tomoe /toe-MOE-eh/ Hasegawa is an eleven-year-old girl in seventeenth-century Japan who aspires to be courageous like the samurai. After Christianity is banned and persecutions intensify, Tomoe’s Catholic community flees to a remote island. They are pursued by the regional deputy who wishes to protect the nation from the corruption of foreign ideas. Tomoe’s many attempts…
Can You See Anything Now?
Can You See Anything Now?, a debut novel, follows a year in the small town of Trinity where the tragedy and humility of a few reveal the reality of people’s motivations and desires. ******* Chapter 1 Margie: early in the morning Of all of the ways that Margie Nethercott could kill herself, she found it…
Back to You
When an old friend unexpectedly reappears, what is she to do? The chances of this happening were none. After years apart, Jordan Shaw runs into the one person she didn’t expect to see again. During college, he was the one whose friendship meant the most to her, but differences forced them to part ways. Now…
One Degree of Freedom
Fifteen-year-old Adriana Nicu lives in the sheltered world of Bucharest, Romania, in the year 1987. Under the rule of Communist president Nicolae Ceaușescu, citizens of Bucharest live with the eyes and ears of the government ever present. Adriana’s future, which will involve becoming an engineer, is locked in against her will. During a visit to…