The biggest compliment a reader can give me is to tell me my book made them cry. Yes, I love a great tear-jerker. I love writing them, and I love reading them. When we feel more deeply, we can live more fully. Books that evoke emotion can help us tune into our authentic selves and confront falsehoods that have held us back from full victory in our lives. Plus, reading is cheaper than therapy! I seek to bring hope, healing, and freedom through fiction. You have to feel to heal, so bring on all the feels.
Natassa seems to have it all – a devoted husband with a good income, beautiful children, a faithful best friend – but it only takes one night for her world to crumble, catapulting her into a journey of trauma and healing, old pressures and new friendships. Will she learn to stand her ground or will she always live in someone else’s shadow?
In the 1800s, a mulatto enslaved girl is torn from her mother and left to figure out who she is on her own. Through her time as a house slave in Tennessee and Kentucky, Mercy grapples with her deep ache for her Mama and her understanding of black and white. Which is more important to her? Freedom or loyalty?
It’s been years since I first read Crossing Oceans and it has stuck with me, its message so moving, so challenging, so compelling, that I can’t forget it.
I read this book through tears, hating the choice that the character made because I doubted it was the one I would have made in her place. Yet, it was the Christ-like choice. This novel challenged me to be more like Jesus and to receive a love from Him that I didn’t have in and of myself.
Jenny Lucas promised herself that the day she left home, pregnant and alone, she'd never look back. But life has a way of upending even the best-laid plans. Now, nearly six years later, she returns to her sleepy North Carolina town to face the ghosts she left behind. While she still can, she's determined to have a say in who will raise her little girl when she's gone - the father she hasn't spoken to since she left or Isabella's dad, who doesn't yet know he has a daughter.
Only the Beautiful is one of the most important books I’ve ever read.
I’ve read many excellent books, but this one highlights the value of human life in such a profound way. It’s weighty, and definitely not an easy “beach” read. Yet, for all the emotions that rise to the surface throughout, I was left with a cord of hope. I’m a mother of a couple of children with special needs.
Historically, society has not placed a high value on the lives of children like mine. However, each day I see the light and beauty they bring to the world. I hope every believer will read this book and take the message to heart.
A Best Historical Fiction of Spring Pick by Amazon, PopSugar, AARP, and BookBub!
A heartrending story about a young mother’s fight to keep her daughter, and the terrible injustice that tears them apart, by the USA Today bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things and The Last Year of the War.
California, 1938—When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser’s daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert’s spacious house with a secret, however—Rosie sees colors when she…
This was a hard pick because I could easily have chosen any of Joanne Bischof’s other books.
She writes with such excellence and depth of feeling that you bond with the characters and go through their trials alongside them. I chose The Gold in These Hills over her other equally loved books because I read it with tears streaming down my face. The theme of restoration after loss and betrayal resonated with me. Deep despair gives way to soul-stretching hope.
Beautiful, quotable prose stuck with me long after I finished. If you want a novel about second chances that speaks deeply to the heart, give this one a try.
When mail-order bride Juniper's husband vanishes, she writes to him-but fears she's waiting for a ghost in a ghost town. A century later, Johnny Sutherland discovers her letters while restoring her abandoned farmhouse. Can her loving words from the distant past change his present?
1902: Upon arriving in Kenworthy, California, mail-order bride Juniper Cohen is met by the pounding of the gold mine, an untamable landscape, and her greatest surprise of all: the kind and charming man who awaits her. But when the mine proves empty of profit, and when Juniper's husband, John, vanishes, Juniper is left to fend for…
Neverending Mercy is a story containing a complicated friendship, growing up, grief, and romance, with a thick thread of redemption woven throughout.
If you’re like me, this novel will challenge you, make you think and feel, and make you cry a bit too. It’s about not just forgiveness, but also reconciliation after betrayal. What does it look like to walk in love after you’ve been hurt?
This story explores that with a depth that pulls at the heartstrings.
Before I Called You Mine truly brought me through the gamut of emotions with a plot that pitted the main character’s two deepest desires against each other: becoming an adoptive mother and true love.
As a mom who has adopted twice, my heart thrummed in time with Lauren’s as she pursued her passion of adopting, only to come up against an obstacle she never expected. This journey of the heart was so relatable and heartfelt, I couldn’t help but walk it with the characters. And wow! What characters.
A novel about tough choices and how following God’s path brings the sweetest rewards in the end. This is a lesson I’ve learned repeatedly in my own life. How encouraging for this book to remind me.
Lauren Bailey may be a romantic at heart, but after a decade of matchmaking schemes gone wrong, there's only one match she's committed to now--the one that will make her a mother. Lauren is a dedicated first-grade teacher in Idaho, and her love for children has led her to the path of international adoption. To satisfy her adoption agency's requirements, she gladly agreed to remain single for the foreseeable future; however, just as her long wait comes to an end, Lauren is blindsided by a complication she never saw coming: Joshua Avery.
Magnolia Merryweather, a horse breeder, is eager to celebrate Christmas for the first time after the Civil War ended even as she grows her business. She envisions a calm, prosperous life ahead after the terror of the past four years. Only, all of her plans are thrown into disarray when her secret lover returns and starts asking questions she can’t answer without disaster following.
Bryce Day comes home to Alabama after he’s discharged from the First Alabama Cavalry USA with guilt weighing on his heart. His neighbors won’t cotton to his Unionist bent, and the woman of his heart likely won’t give him a second chance after his silence during the war. Only, she’s hiding something from him.
How can they have any hope of a loving life together with lies and secrets between them?
One terrible lie, a desperate measure to save her past, just might destroy her future…
Award-winning author of historical fiction presents a new novel of love and lies, secrets and sensuality, and the hands of fate weaving it all together.
The American Civil War is finally over and Christmas beckons. Magnolia Merryweather, backyard horse breeder, is eager to celebrate for the first time since the war began even as she continues to grow her business. She envisions a calm, prosperous life ahead after all the terror of the past four years. She’s preparing to follow in her mother’s matriarchal footsteps,…
