Into the Fire

The five remaining novels in simple synopses:

Sweet Release (150,677 words)

Sweet Release begins with the assertive independence of film critic CM Rutheford experiencing confusion at her inability to find satisfaction in her relationship with Matt Preston, handsome architectural designer who has fallen in love with her. Unexpectedly, and because she seems unable to return his feelings for her, Matt accepts a new high-powered job and relocates in his home state of California. As CM reels from their breakup, she receives a call from her mother revealing her estranged father has been in a serious car accident and to come quickly to the hospital and accompanied by a strange request to listen to what her father has to say when she arrives. Long divorced from CM’s father, her mother, Millie Rutheford, has never loved another man in spite of his unfaithfulness. A startling confession as he lay critically injured in the hospital puts her heart at peace and provides vindication for her soul.

Love is just a four letter word until its true revelation hits hard in the heart of six people who have yet to fully sample what it means to experience it in its truest form. The journey these six individuals make to realize the origin and reality of genuine love is both gut-wrenching and rapturous. Ultimately they find the sweet release to love freely.

Wounds . . . and Healings (141,267 words)

Faith Daniels opens her coffee shop to a new customer, rugged but handsome in his unshaven appearance. Immediately she recognizes a certain look he carries and is embarrassed to note it’s because she wears the same expression—that of a lonely kind of pain. He returns the following day, and he asks her to join him at his table and after learning her name, he asks if she has any faith. They discover neither of them has. Both of them disclose they had terrible marriages of many years culminating with their spouses’ deaths before divorce took place. The perversions of Faith’s husband and the cruel manipulations of Paul Melling’s wife are confessed openly, establishing a unique rapport from the miseries of their pasts. They are wounded adults drawn together by their revelations which neither has ever fully discussed with anyone else.

Who can repair the souls damaged by the intentions of those they thought they loved? Wounded by the ugliness of sin, the long and painful journey to healing cannot be found outside the place where God has stored His love and mercy.

Destination (169,615 words)

Thomas Grand serves his time for manslaughter in the second degree and leaves jail as a divorced felon for his unintentional crime. After an emotionally brutal encounter with his ex-wife and with little to look forward to except a hint of hope in his heart, he heads back to the obscure location of his childhood and the one person he hopes is still alive to propel his newfound faith to the next level and to restore meaning to his damaged life. The summer heat swirls around him along with the dust as he drives up to the magnificent Spanish-style home of the elderly widow he has always known by her familiar nickname of “Grams”. With little ado about his arrival after so many years, she immediately accommodates his need for lodging and work as well as that of acceptance, companionship, and genuine friendship.

An unlikely felon returns to his roots and the friendship of a fiery old widow. The last things he expects to find are true love, a ministry to youth, and the unusual burden for his new love’s ex-fiancé.

The Fixer (88,516 words)

Doe, Lamb, and Megan (Ewe) Landon-Anderson, beautiful daughters of the unmarried photographer and his favorite model, each has chosen her own way of coping with a father who could not commit to their mother and was in and out of the home until leaving for the final time when the youngest, Megan, was thirteen. Doe surrenders herself to her first love and lives with him for four years in the home her parents left to her. Lamb, dubbed “the fixer” by her mother, chose to turn to Jesus when she was in high school and is the one her sisters inevitably turn to in crisis. Megan, who ignores her first name, is the driven daughter who emulates her deceased father’s lifestyle, believing if she does the leaving and rejects commitment, she will remain unfettered by love and immune to the pain she conceals from her father’s departure.

The long affair between a photographer and his beautiful model produces three illegitimate daughters and a legacy of heartbreak. One sister bears the burden for her other two as their lives are in crisis from a warped concept of relationships.

Breath of Life (115,671 words)

Breath of Life tells the story of embittered, wounded, and divorced Michael Jamison, who, after a prolonged period as the casual observer of a lovely woman, discovers his attraction to her supercedes remaining a stranger. With a smarting ego and nothing to lose, he figures out a non-threatening way to introduce himself and is overwhelmed with her pristine beauty and challenged to change everything about the way he’s lived his life so far. Told in mostly Michael’s first person POV, we share the conflict he faces when for the first time in his 37 years he realizes he cannot be the man he’s always been with her, and to compound all of his other concerns, he finds she is attempting to become a Christian.

Few people really consider the cost of sexual sin . . . until it’s too late.

Father, thank you for each story, each character, each place, and each time. Thank you for your creativity. Thank you for allowing me the beauty of writing “story”. It’s a privlege and a pleasure. May they always bless you somehow, some way. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.