This weekend I have to review a book for Romantic Times, and write two reviews for this blog. And I have to say one of the biggest drawbacks for me in all fiction this year is that some writers haven't pulled me in. I can't root for their characters, because I don't know their heart. You know?
AND--I believe that Christian Fiction could be the genre to beat, because its purpose is to speak on the heart of our hearts--GOD. And...yes...we have read christian fiction novels that are pew propaganda, syrupy sermons, and elitist escapism. We all have read that. But we have also read many toe tingling, sould stirring stories and what a great joy they are when we read them. And from what I'm hearing from Christian authors, and what I'm reading in unpublished manuscripts that a new day is on the horizon in Christian Fiction and I'm excited.
Yesterday, I received a great letter from Olympia Vernon. And in her letter she wrote:
After writing A Killing in This Town, I discovered Claude Neal, a black man who had been murdered... I did not know the full story until I had written the novel; this is when the tears came down, for when I write a novel, I go strictly on the energy I receive from God, and then, I find out what that energy was used for.
Then she sent me a first chapter of this novel-A Killing in This Town. And Lord, have mercy...HEART...poured all out on that page.
Book DescriptionFrom an award-winning and critically acclaimed writer comes a searing novel about a small Mississippi town trapped in a cycle of racism and violence, and the two boys who heroically defy tradition and seek an end to the injustice. Olympia Vernon's third novel, A Killing in This Town, is a taut, poetic masterpiece that exhumes a horrific epoch from the annals of the American South. There is a menace in the woods of Bullock County, Mississippi, and not only for the black man destined to be lynched when a white boy comes of age. The white men who work at the Pauer Plant are in danger, too, but they refuse to heed pastor Earl Thomas’s urgent message that the factory is slowly killing them. It is only when Gill Mender — a man haunted by past sins — returns to town that change seems possible. A transfixing and pivotal work of fiction, A Killing in This Town exposes the fragile hierarchy of a society poisoned by hatred, and shows the power of an individual to stand up to the demons of history and bring the cycle of violence to an end.
If you want a copy of the first chapter(she has okayed me to do it,) I will send it to you, just email me. And if this novel compels to you to join in Claude's struggle, then buy the book.
If you are writing today, or like J.Mark following the yellow brick road to find a heart, or like me trying to control my crazy heart, let's keep each other encouraged. Let's support the Body.
Writing to see what the end's gon' be,
Dee
2 comments:
Ms. Vernon rises from inner pain to find inner strength in her writing. Her laughter and smile are infectious and her faith, unshakable, I look forward to the release of Olympia's book as such coming-of-age stories are still too familiar an aspect of American life in the South and North. Thank you, Dee, for having a place in space where messengers from the wilderness can express their voices. With NeverEnding Love, I remain...Raymond thammuzis1@juno.com
Amen, Raymond.
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