***NOTE: I did not receive a copy of this book to review, so this is just the tour/first chapter.***
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
My dream, ever since I was a little girl, was to be a super hero. Specifically, I wanted to be one of the Wonder Twins, meeting with Superman and Wonder Woman at the Hall of Justice on Saturday mornings to fight evil and save the world. Lacking a twin, I got a law degree instead, thinking it would give me evil-fighting super hero powers. As it turns out, I was wrong.
Shortly after realizing that I hated billable hours, I ended (read: fled) my career in law, and spent the next few years trying to make sense of the world. I couldn't shake the belief that things could/should/would be different - better, somehow - if only I could figure out what really mattered. I wanted to know how things like spirituality and luck and intuition worked, and how I could make them work for me. So I embarked on a quest to find the right God, but spent much of my time trying to find the right guy. At a certain point, after accumulating a heaping pile of mistakes on both counts, I came to see that the two might be intertwined.
The good news is, after much trial and error, I finally found them both: the God, and the guy.
Now I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts with my super hero-husband Steve, and our genetically-improbable mixed-breed dog. I wrote a book about my search, "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: A Memoir of Finding Faith, Hope, and Happily Ever After," published by Hachette Book Group in 2008. The follow up, "A Maze of Grace: A Memoir of Second Chances" will be in stores in June 2010. And while I sit at my laptop typing each day, the Wonder Twin dream lives on...
Visit the author's website. Visit the author's blog.
Product Details:
List Price: $19.99 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: FaithWords (June 22, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 0446545813 ISBN-13: 978-0446545815
PLEASE PRESS THE 'BROWSE INSIDE THIS BOOK' BUTTON TO READ THE FIRST CHAPTER:
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Joan Ball is a professor in the Peter J. Tobin College of Business at St. Johns University in New York, and a writer at Beliefnet.com. She and her husband, Martin, have three children and they live in suburban New York.
List Price: $14.99 Paperback: 213 pages Publisher: Howard Books; Original edition (May 11, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1439149879 ISBN-13: 978-1439149874 Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.5 x 0.6 inches
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Struck
Thirty-seven is way too young to be having a heart attack, I thought, resting my hand on my chest and struggling to catch my breath. I’m sure it’s nothing.
But somewhere deep inside I knew I was lying to myself. Although I was a firm believer in mind over matter, my attempts to will away the waves of nausea and shortness of breath were failing miserably.
As my stoic resolve began to dissolve into genuine concern, I think there might actually be something wrong with me.
I looked at my watch, then over my shoulder into the serious-looking faces of forty or fifty strangers scattered in little clumps throughout the massive, mostly empty main sanctuary of a church we’d been attending for about a month. These clean-cut, well-manicured families in their suits and dresses and sensible shoes were way too straitlaced for my taste. In fact, they perfectly embodied the stereotype of church folks I’d carried along on my spiritual (and sometimes not so spiritual) journey from staunch atheism to recovery-based, power-greater-than-myself pseudo-agnosticism. They appeared boring and predictable; I saw nothing of myself in these people, and I was confident that their conception of Jesus as God was a farce.
Despite my growing concern over the pressure in my chest, I sat motionless, proud enough to choose the anonymity of the pew over creating a scene with a quick exit.
Of course, this begs the question: What was I doing there in the first place?
Faith aside, church and a nice brunch made for a surprisingly relaxing Sunday-morning routine that offset nicely the insane pace we managed to maintain Monday through Saturday. And since the kids liked meeting their friends there, it seemed like a benign sacrifice of an hour in exchange for some quality family-bonding time.
Even so, I didn’t really trust these church people. There was something about their unwavering propriety that I was sure amounted to little more than a thin disguise for a subtle yet palpable wariness of “outsiders.” Maybe it was the body language or the tone of their voices, but I always came away with the distinct sense that our presence was more tolerated than welcomed. Sure, they did all the right things. The smiles, hellos, and “how-was-your-week’s” were delivered perfectly, as if on cue. But, in the white space between the pleasantries, there was this underlying something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
It was kind of like a friend hosting a party who meets you at the door with a pleasant “Come on in. Make yourself at home. Can I get you a drink?” while shooting daggers at the husband she was fighting with as you pulled up the driveway. The words and actions say welcome, but you can’t help but feel otherwise.
Seven years in addiction recovery had conditioned me to believe that the newcomer—on the wagon or still drinking—is always the most important person in the room. This made the perceived lack of warmth distasteful enough that I thought it best to maintain a polite distance, just to be safe. That said, at this point in my life the polite distance suited me just fine. In fact, the protective cordiality on both sides allowed my husband, Martin, our three kids, and me finally, after nearly two years of halfhearted church shopping, to consider this a place where we might hang our spiritual hats.
I probably wouldn’t have been at church at all if I’d not married Martin six years earlier. When we met, in 1992, I was a single mother and a rabid atheist. More than that, my most potent venom was reserved for theists of the Christian persuasion. I’ve since been told that this brand of anti-theism is frequently born in bad experiences with the church or parochial school, but I was raised without any of that religious baggage.
Although my parents had grown up Roman Catholic, they abandoned the practice before I started grade school. So, coming from what could best be called a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps secular environment, I’d pieced together my own personal philosophy on religion and faith. In my view, people who embraced God and religion were emotionally, physically, or intellectually weak and unable to carry themselves through life on their own. This elaborate ruse called faith provided them with an external construct to prop them up. A fantasy scaffolding that I was smart enough and strong enough to avoid.
Although I vehemently disparaged believers, certain people or groups were paradoxically excluded from my disdain. My devout Catholic grandmother and others in my mother’s family fell into this category, as did anyone who embraced a spiritual path that I perceived to be cooler than Christianity—which included almost every religion or faith tradition on earth that wasn’t Christianity. I have to admit that their pardon was based on random criteria that made neither logical nor theological sense. Naturally, Martin—at the time a Bible-believing, Pentecostal-church-attending Christian—was exempt from my ire. But that was mainly because he was sexy, played guitar, and rarely talked about God unless someone else brought it up.
Note “In my view, people who embraced God and religion were emotionally, physically, or intellectually weak and unable to carry themselves through life on their own.”
I was like one of those aggressively discriminatory people who hate blacks or whites or gays, yet has one of those “friends who is different” from the stereotype. Somehow, the people I loved and respected were excused from my considerable contempt for Christians, yet I never disbanded my theory that faith was an illusion. It was this kind of convoluted mental calculus that allowed me to agree to a church wedding to Martin in 1996, and that fueled my sporadic church attendance—devoid of Christian faith—for the years that followed.
Surprisingly, in those months before and after we were married, I actually came to like going to church. There was something about the rhythm of doing the same thing once a week, every week, that was . . . I don’t know . . . comforting. Like playing house as a child.
And I got pretty good at playing church.
We went on Sundays and took the kids to a family program on Wednesdays. I even stepped in as a substitute Sunday-school teacher once or twice, which was really weird, since I couldn’t have answered even the simplest questions about the faith with any depth or accuracy if I’d been asked. Thankfully my students were four- and five-year-olds, and I’d been given a pretty thorough syllabus, so no one ever called my bluff. I probably could have continued attending church like that forever—a polite, clandestine agnostic—and no one would have been the wiser. But then we decided to move.
When we settled into our house in Warwick, a rural suburb of New York City, church became an inconvenience. The longer drive from our new house to church got real old, real quick and it didn’t take long for us to realize that losing twenty minutes of sleep to make it to church on time required a greater sacrifice than we were willing to make. After a couple months of setting the clock, overusing the snooze button, and vowing to “try again next week,” we figured we’d try to find a new church in Warwick. When our admittedly halfhearted search for a new place failed, we gave church a little rest. Surely Martin’s Jesus would understand that we were busy people with busy lives. Sunday was the only day that we were guaranteed a chance to sleep in. This omnipotent God had to know we worked hard to balance our careers, the kids’ activities, and the house all week and that we wanted—no, we deserved—a little extra sleep on Sunday mornings.
What we thought would be a short hiatus from church lasted about two years, until our daughter, Kesley, who was thirteen at the time, asked a plaintive question.
“Mom? Do you think we’ll ever go to church again?”
I had never gone to church as a kid, but I do remember what I was up to when I was thirteen. If I had a kid who was actually asking to go to church, I figured I should probably listen.
“Sure, Kels,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “We’ll go back soon.”
So, as quickly as we’d abandoned the Sunday-morning church routine, we reinstated it.
The routine was simple and predictable. We’d start out calm and quiet. Andrew and Ian, who were fourteen and five at the time, were the early risers. They’d wake up and make their way down to the basement family room, where they’d stretch out on facing couches and watch TV or play video games. Kelsey, who was a little slower and a lot grumpier in the morning, usually slept in until the last possible minute. Martin and I fell somewhere in the middle. We’d set the clock for far earlier than either of us intended to wake up and hit the snooze (love that snooze) before lounging in bed, talking or reading (or whatever . . .), until we’d lingered just long enough to get to church almost on time.
Now, if you ask me, being almost on time for anything is far worse than being completely late. Completely late makes it easier to resort to a simple, more relaxing Plan B, like “Let’s just sleep in” or “How about breakfast instead?” Being almost on time, on the other hand, held out a faint but real hope that, despite evidence to the contrary, Plan A may still be achievable. Almost on time got our competitive juices flowing and opened the door to chaos. It told us that, if we hustled, we might just make up the time—even if it meant tormenting ourselves and our children and ruining an otherwise peaceful morning. Martin and I took the bait every time.
“Kelsey, can you please finish getting ready and help your brother find his shoes?” I’d shout up from the bottom of the two-story foyer.
“You can’t wear that shirt, it’s dirty. Go change.” Martin would say as he abruptly intercepted Andrew in the kitchen.
Then I’d snap at our youngest as he followed me from room to room, holding a hundred trading cards and a shoe. “No, Ian, you cannot bring your Pokémon cards. Go ask Kelsey to help you find your other shoe.”
And finally, as if playing a role in a recurring nightmare, Martin would call from the back deck, “If you guys are not in the car in two minutes . . .”
Getting two adults, two teenagers, and a five-year-old showered, dressed, and out the door of a three-story house with three bathrooms shouldn’t be that difficult. And yet somehow it always was. So much for the nice, relaxing family morning.
Eventually, we’d pile into our SUV and back down the cobblestone driveway, catching a glimpse of our picture-postcard, red brick center-hall colonial as we went.
That Sunday morning in 2003 was no different.
“Martin, can I have my sunglasses?” I asked, turning down the cul-de-sac straight into the surprisingly strong spring sunshine.
“Where are they?” he said as he leaned down to rifle through my bigger-than-necessary bag.
“They should be in the inside pocket,” I said, hitting the gas, checking my makeup in the rearview mirror, and handing him my glasses in one unconscious and mindlessly dangerous motion.
He took my black-framed, cat-eye glasses and handed me a pair of dark Jackie-Os that set off my shoulder-length blond hair and monochromatic black outfit, completing the New York urban-chic style that I was trying hard to make look easy.
I looked down at the digital display—9:54 A.M. With six minutes to drive five minutes across town, we were still in the game. I made a quick right out of the cul-de-sac, rolled through a couple of stop signs, and turned into the parking lot as the church bells sounded the last deep doooong. Breathing a sigh of relief, we hit our seats just in time for the organist to play the intro to the first hymn.
Yes, I thought, there’s nothing like landing on the right side of almost on time.
As the notes boomed out of the enormous antique pipe organ and the robe-clad choir fought a losing battle to find the right key, I found myself looking up at the arched stained-glass windows that flanked the massive stone church. Someone had once told me that the panels were museum quality, designed and constructed by Tiffany & Co. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. They were amazing. Intricate patterns of metal and glass joined to form complex jewel-toned images of Jesus and his crew that exploded when backlit by the sun. I followed the colored beams as they cascaded through well-defined images of faces, bodies, and crosses into an impromptu dance of color that shifted on the floor as if projected by a giant, priceless kaleidoscope.
Note “With six minutes to drive five minutes across town, we were still in the game.”
I could always appreciate the majestic beauty of a church or cathedral. It was all that religion that happened inside that turned me off. I wonder how much you could get for those things at Sotheby’s, I thought as I turned my attention forward, where a boyish-looking man was calling the congregation to order. He wore a long white robe with a purple sash, the standard uniform for what the church people referred to as the traditional service.
This pastor, whom I will call Pastor Thomas, was about the same age as Martin and me—somewhere in his mid- to late thirties. Despite the fact that he was a little geeky, he seemed nice enough from a distance. We’d only spoken to him once or twice: brief, nice-to-see-you-back-again, so-nice-to-be-back conversations as we left the church. We might have avoided these rather awkward exchanges altogether were it not his custom to stand at the back door of the church sanctuary at the end of the service. It was like the receiving line at a wedding: people making their way down aisles at the left, right, and center of the enormous room, converging at the back into a human traffic jam.
“Before we get started,” Pastor Thomas announced with a broad smile on his face, “Mary Rooney and her son Jason [not their real names] are going to be accepted as new members of our congregation.” Apparently, anyone can go to church, but becoming a member took it to the next level. I just wasn’t sure what that next level looked like.
I almost applauded when the two of them stood up, but caught myself, forgetting that the people here never clapped. Even when singers did a fantastic duet or solo . . . nothing. No one else seemed to mind, but I found that pregnant pause while the musicians cleared their music and returned to their seats in silence to be distractingly awkward. One day I made the mistake of using the no-clapping thing as fodder for pre-service small talk with one of the women who seemed to be involved in a number of church activities.
Note “I almost applauded when the two of them stood up, but caught myself, forgetting that the people here never clapped.”
“Why is it,” I asked, “that no one ever claps for the singers or musicians?”
She made no attempt to hide her disdain for my question as she said curtly, “This is a church, not a concert.”
As Mary and her elementary-school-age son came to their feet, I wondered whether they were alone because of a divorce, if her husband had died, or if she had just chosen to have a child on her own. Whatever the circumstances, they reminded me of how difficult it had been to be a single mother and how lucky Andrew, Kelsey, and I were to have Martin in our lives. Once Ian was born, our new family was complete.
Pastor Thomas made his way across the stage (I think there’s a more formal name for it, but it looked like a stage to me) and opened a huge book that sat on a quarter-sawn oak pedestal. Then, without speaking, he raised his hands and swept them upward in a small circle like a conductor, and we all came to our feet. After a short prayer, and maybe another hymn, he began to ask Mary and Jason a series of questions.
“Do you accept the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the only way to eternal life?”
“I do,” they answered.
“Do you acknowledge that you are a sinner, sinful by nature, but that by the grace of God alone your sins have been forgiven and your old nature put to death, so that you may be brought to newness of life and set apart as a member of the Body of Christ?”
“I do.”
This Q and A went on for a few more minutes, covering promises to pray, seek God’s guidance, grow in faith, attend church, and accept and obey the rules and guidance of the church elders. They responded with dutiful “I dos” and “I wills” at the end of each question.
Next, the members of the congregation were asked if they would welcome the woman and her son into the “community of faith” and if they would “pledge to them your love, your prayers, and your encouragement as they live the Christian life with us.” The responses of the few dozen congregants in the large room sounded a little empty, as they delivered the best “We dos” and “We wills” they could muster. Not wanting to appear rude, I lip-synched the words along with the crowd.
Oh well, I thought, I guess I could never become a member of this church.
My understanding of the church-membership thing was still a little sketchy. Best I could tell, signing up with a certain church presupposed a heightened level of commitment, or maybe it just indicated that you intend to stick around. While I was okay with getting involved in some church activities or playing in the band, saying “I do” to anything involving Jesus was a commitment I was not willing, able, or interested in making.
Note “Saying ‘I do’ to anything involving Jesus was a commitment I was not willing, able, or interested in making.”
Sure, given the havoc I had wrought on myself and on others in my twenties, I could almost accept the notion that I might be sinful by nature. I’d even come to a place in my thirties, through the literature and guidance of a 12-step program, where I could pray to a “power greater than myself” with some assurance that it was better to pray than not to pray. But Jesus? The Old and New Testaments? Eternal life? Martin believed in all of that stuff, but not me. Not today. Not tomorrow. No way.
I was hoping that the church-membership thing wouldn’t extend the service longer than the usual one hour. I was pretty hungry and looking forward to endulging in some pancakes and syrup, even though yogurt and fruit would have been the more responsible option. As the announcements finished, Pastor Thomas began his sermon. The message was from the last book of the Bible, called Revelation.
The end of the world as we know it, oh my.
I knew very little about the Bible beyond my absolute confidence that, despite the heartfelt claims of the radio Christians, it was not the divinely inspired Word of God. I mean, how could it be? All of those writers with their hands all over it across the centuries and not one typo? I couldn’t understand who in their right mind would ever believe that all of those angry monks and sadistic inquisitors never changed a little bit of this or that to tip the scales in their favor. How gullible could people be?
While it might have been a lovely notion that some benevolent creator of the universe whispered down two thousand pages of frequently contradictory text because he loves people, I believed the whole Christianity thing had started as an elaborate ruse, perpetrated by powerful and wealthy people to control the uneducated masses. Then, like some centuries-old version of the kids’ game Telephone, the rules and the false hope they promised became a sad and pathetic crutch for the weak and a powerful hammer for the pious.
Note “I believed the whole Christianity thing had started as an elaborate ruse, perpetrated by powerful and wealthy people to control the uneducated masses.”
Pastor Thomas started talking about Jesus’ returning to earth—for what would be the end of the world—at a time that no one could predict. Judgment day. Armageddon. You don’t need to be a Christian to be familiar with these terms and the notions they conjure. I was half-listening and wondering what any of this could ever have to do with me when he began to read:
Then I saw Heaven open wide—and oh! A white horse and its Rider. The Rider named Faithful and True, judges and makes war in pure righteousness. His eyes are a blaze of fire, on his head many crowns. He has a Name inscribed that’s known only to himself. He is dressed in a robe soaked with blood, and he is addressed as “Word of God.” The armies of Heaven, mounted on white horses and dressed in dazzling white linen, follow him. A sharp sword comes out of his mouth so he can subdue the nations, then rule them with a rod of iron. He treads the winepress of the raging wrath of God, the Sovereign-Strong. On his robe and thigh is written, king of kings, lord of lords.
Apparently, unlike the love-everybody-Gandhi Jesus, the come-back-at-the-end-of-the-world Jesus is a wild warrior who’ll show up ready to rumble.
A sword in his mouth? I thought. These people are nuts.
That’s when my chest started to hurt.
At first it was just a small hollowness right below my sternum, like the sensation you get from swallowing too much pool water. Then came a wave of nausea. And then another. Finally, I started to have trouble catching my breath. Did I eat something bad? I wondered to myself. I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, so maybe last night. Maybe indigestion? My watch read 10:45.
Just fifteen more minutes, I thought as I began to break into a cold sweat.
I contemplated leaving, but I was on the center side of a twelve-foot-long pew, which left me with two equally untenable choices: either I walk up the wide center aisle between row after row of intricately carved wooden pews while clutching my chest and gasping for breath, or I climb over Martin, the kids, and another family to get to the side aisle to do the same. I looked left and then right, considering my options, and decided that both involved more drama than I was willing to risk. And I was just image conscious enough to risk death by heart attack to avoid it. So I drew another deep breath and tried to focus on keeping myself from throwing up.
Note “I was just image conscious enough to risk death by heart attack to avoid it. So I drew another deep breath and tried to focus on keeping myself from throwing up.”
Martin, who was sitting to my right, was completely unaware of what I was going through. The heaviness of his eyelids, the rhythmic bobbing of his head, and his occasional half snore revealed that he was fighting a battle of his own. He could usually count on me for a gentle but firm elbow to the ribs when he was about to descend into REM sleep during a sermon, but today was different. As the minutes passed and my condition worsened, I had to admit that something was very, very wrong.
“Martin,” I finally whispered with an uncharacteristic sense of urgency, “Baby, wake up.”
“What?” he said, looking around. “I’m not sleeping.” “You’re not going to believe this,” I replied, ignoring his I’m-not-sleeping delusion, “but I think I might be having a freaking heart attack.”
Martin had been with me long enough to know that I was more prone to ignore illness than to overstate it. Looking at me with a combination of uncertainty and concern, he asked, “Do you want to go to the hospital?”
“No,” I said, still allowing self-consciousness to trump my mounting alarm. “Let’s wait and see what happens.”
Intent on maintaining my composure, I quietly struggled to catch a healthy breath and endure the distinct sensation that there was a five-hundred-pound weight perched squarely on the center of my chest.
Just five more minutes.
When the service ended, I took Martin’s arm, and with the kids in tow, we made our way down the center aisle toward the exit. Trying to remain ever so dignified in the midst of my increasing distress, we weaved in and out of small groups of people as quickly as possible, intending to beat the exit traffic without drawing undue attention to ourselves. The church folks were in no hurry as they waited in line to be greeted by Pastor Thomas, who stood between us and the door.
Please don’t try to talk to us. I have to get out of here.
Thankfully, an ancient woman whose curved body stood about four feet high had cornered Pastor Thomas, serving as a welcomed detour on the highway of people squeezing past them to make their way into the parking lot. Still holding on to Martin’s arm to maintain my balance, I scurried to the car, fighting the sensation that my legs might go out from under me at any moment. Come on, come on, I repeated to myself. I needed to get into the car. I needed to get home. I needed . . . I needed . . . I didn’t know what I needed, but I knew I didn’t need to be standing in that parking lot.
Martin unlocked the passenger-side door and helped me lift myself into the seat of the SUV as he closed the door. The kids stuffed themselves into the backseat, ignorant of what I was going through and likely expecting me to ask where they’d like to go for brunch. But what they got was something very different.
Note “Somewhere in the midst of all this, the pain in my chest lifted, and there I was . . . crying ugly and repeating over and over again, ‘It is all true, all of it, it is all true.’”
The minute I found myself in the privacy of the car, a wave of intense emotion came over me. It was like a dam had broken, a flood of pent-up pressure released behind it in the form of sobbing and hysterical crying. Somewhere in the midst of all this, the pain in my chest lifted and there I was—generally a model of rigid self-control and modern accomplishment—crying ugly and repeating over and over again, “It is all true, all of it, it is all true.” In that moment I knew I was not having a heart attack. Instead, despite lifelong skepticism and outright animosity toward traditional religion, without asking or seeking, this skeptical atheist turned churchgoing agnostic had somehow been struck Christian.
***NOTE: I will review this book when I receive it ~I didn't sign up to tour it, but am doing so because I will be getting a copy of this book later. Thanks!***
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It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Mark Matlock has been working with youth pastors, students, and parents for two decades. He speaks to hundreds of thousands of students around the world each year, and presents biblical truths in ways that motivate people to change. Mark is the vice president of event content at Youth Specialties and the founder of WisdomWorks Ministries and PlanetWisdom. He’s the author of several books including The Wisdom On - series, Living a Life That Matters, Don’t Buy The Lie, Freshman, and Smart Faith. Mark lives in Texas with his wife Jade and their two children.
List Price: $12.99 Paperback: 176 pages Publisher: Zondervan/Youth Specialties (February 23, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 0310669367 ISBN-13: 978-0310669364
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
What Are Real World Parents?
I have a vivid memory of being a teenager and sitting at the dinner table with my family, rolling my eyes and pretending to gag behind my dad's back.
Why?
He was trying to do family devotions with us. But my three younger brothers and I just weren't buying it.
Every four or five months my dad would hear some program on Christian radio about family devotions, and he'd come home with another new idea for making it work with our family. After all, that's what Christian families are supposed to do, right? But it just never worked in our house. It felt completely forced and unnatural.
Still, somehow all four of us Matlock boys ended up in ministry. My youngest brother, Jonathan, helped me start WisdomWorks Ministries, and now we both do pretty much the same kind of youth ministry and youth minister support through Youth Specialties. Our brother Josh is a senior pastor in Southern California, and our brother Jeremy is a missionary in Russia. And still to this day, whenever Dad tries to bring us together for Òfamily devotionsÓ during the holidays, we mock him a little. It's become a kind of tradition because it isn't genuine for who we are as a family.
Now, I'm not saying that having kids who serve in some area of ministry means you're a successful parent. The point I'm making is that all four of my dad's sons grew into men with a real passion and appreciation for God's Word--even though he couldn't get us to sit still and take the reading of the Word seriously during repeated failed attempts at family devotions.
Why? Because we knew he had a real passion and appreciation for God's Word. We saw Dad reading the Bible. We saw him struggle to apply it to his life. We saw both of our parents base their decisions on their understanding of what the Bible teaches.
Ultimately we were convinced of the worldview contained in the pages of Scripture because we saw our parents openly endorsing it, talking about it, learning from it, and living it out day after day, year after year. That was enough for us--despite the failed attempts at family devotions.
That's what this book is about. We're not interested in presenting more artificial techniques and methodology to ÒfixÓ our kids or do what Christian families are Òsupposed to do.Ó Rather we want to help you discover how to live for God in a real way, right in front of your kids, so they can't help but catch the big picture that God and his Word mean the world to us and that living for Jesus really works in the Real World.
Don't get me wrong. Not all families are built to the same specifications. We each have our own family DNA. So if family devotions fit who you are, more power to you! Organized, structured, traditional family devotions are a great tool for some families. Now that my wife, Jade, and I have two kids of our own--our son Dax is in middle school, and our daughter Skye is 10--we've tried to have a family Bible hour around the table. It kind of worked off and on when the kids were younger, but we eventually realized it wasn't a good fit for the natural rhythm of our lives. It's not who we are right now. So instead we've found ways to talk about God's Word that are a better fit for us.
As we work together through the concepts in this book, one thing we'll discover is that Real World Parents are real in the sense that they do what best fits their families, and they genuinely adjust their own lives to fit into God's story.
Is God Happy with My Family?
In the church today, there's some really good teaching on parenting. My wife and I have benefited from writers, conference speakers, and pastors who've opened God's Word and helped us connect with what it means to raise up our children in the way they should go, how to provide godly discipline, and ideas for reinforcing good behavior. But again, that's not what this book is about.
And, honestly, over the years I've been frustrated with some teaching on parenting that's built around making parents feel guilty. These teachers, authors, books, and programs build parenting models based on our common fear that we're going to mess up our kids--or that we've already messed up our kids. That's an easy road that plays on our fears and our guilt over the areas in which we struggle as parents. Then they suggest that their programs or perspectives are our final hope to Òget it rightÓ or, worse, to do it the only way God wants it done.
That's not what this book is about, either. I promise not to use your parenting fears and anxieties against you. And we all have those feelings. I know I have them. If you could spend a little time with my family, you'd quickly see that we have issues, too. Those prone to critiquing parents would have no trouble criticizing my wife and me. So, no, I'm not interested in beating up other parents in order to somehow make them feel better or more motivated in their parenting.
In fact, I'd like to communicate exactly the opposite.
In our Real World Parent seminars, held around the United States, our teachers use a self-diagnostic tool to help attendees identify what they believe God thinks of their families.
It goes something like this:
What do you think God sees when he looks at your family? Do you think God grins or grimaces? (Place an X on the line.)
God Grins God Grimaces
This can be a challenging question if you take it seriously. On one hand, those of us who've grown up in Christian churches understand the idea of God's grace. We understand that our relationship with God isn't based on our performance. God sacrificed his only Son--the Son whom God loves so deeply--to pay for our sins on a cross. And God did this long before we even knew we wanted that gift from God. Thus, we'd always check the box that says God's love is unconditional for those of us in Christ.
Still, we have trouble carrying the idea of God's grace into our parenting. We can talk ourselves into believing that failing our kids is an unforgivable sin, that God could never be pleased with us if we've been guilty of sloppy or harsh or inconsistent or selfish or fearful or overprotective or neglectful parenting.
We may wonder how God could ever look at our families and grin. And the problem is that, as parents, we sometimes forget that we're also children--that our God is our Father, and that God is more lovingly inclined to smile at us than we are to smile at our own kids. Our Father loves us, and he forgives our parenting shortcomings and our family failings.
I will say this more than once: Nothing you read in this book will make God the Father love you and your family any more than he does right now, no matter what's going on with your family today.
I made this statement at one of our Real World Parent seminars, and I noticed that one of the women began to cry. She came up to me later and explained how inferior she's felt as a mother in her local church. Her husband isn't a believer, her kids get into trouble, and she just felt like such a failure--like a second-class parent in a church where most of the other parents were both Christians, still married, and raising such ÒniceÓ children.
I tried to assure her that God's grace applies to us as parents, and that in Christ she is forgiven and fully accepted as a beloved daughter (and mom!). The idea that God loved her family right now--in its present condition--was a reality she wasn't living in. She felt she was ÒunderperformingÓ as a parent and couldn't keep up. So she said the idea that she's forgiven, accepted, and loved as a parent gave her immense comfort.
Ernest Hemingway's short story called ÒThe Capital of the WorldÓ begins with an anecdote about a man in Madrid who put an ad in the newspaper to contact his estranged son. The ad read, PACO, MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY. ALL IS FORGIVEN. PAPA. The story then describes how at noon on Tuesday, 800 young men arrived at the hotel to make peace with their fathers.
The joke was that there are lots of guys in Spain named Paco. But the other message is that wanting our dads' approval, specifically, is a universal human experience. Taking nothing away from the indispensable role of our mothers, we all long to have our fathers sign off on who we are and what we're doing.
It's what psychologists call Òfather hunger.Ó
As Christians, followers of Jesus, we have that hunger even in our roles as parents, even if we've made mistakes along the way. Our Father has forgiven us. We live in God's grace. God approves of us in Christ. And, yes, God loves us.
I want to make it perfectly clear--again--that you'll find no directives in this book that will make God love you or your family even a little bit more than he already does. God's unconditional love for your family was established long ago. It is full. It cannot grow. Romans 8:1 declares, ÒTherefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.Ó And that includes Christian parents.
I hope you've heard that. But I also hope you aren't satisfied to leave your family where it is today. Because while I'm convinced that God will never love or accept you any more than he does right now, I'm also convinced that God loves you so much that he won't leave you where you are right now, either.
No matter how good or bad you believe your family is, God has plans for you that will unfold in the Real World. God will continue to move your family along in the journey he has in store for you. Which is why this book is designed to help Real World Parents understand that journey--or story--and communicate it to our kids.
ÒHow Will This Book Fix My Kids?Ó
As long as we're talking about things this book isn't, I should mention again that in the following pages you won't find any tips or tricks or techniques to fix your children's bad behavior. (We'd probably sell more copies if that's what we were promising, but we're not.)
In my experience, books full of tips, techniques, and tricks succeed at making readers feel good for a while. They make us feel hopeful. They make us feel as though we're doing something about the problem. But they often fail in the long run because we just can't keep it up. We can't change the personalities of our families to fit the models of the new programs on an ongoing basis.
When my kids came along, though, and I started making my way through all the different kinds of Christian parenting books, I noticed that a lot of them focused on helping me raise well-behaved, well-mannered kids. And while that's an important element, there wasn't much focus on raising kids to have hearts that seek after Christ. Of course we can't force that kind of spiritual openness and connectedness with God onto our kids--but in our Real World homes, we can create environments that promote such growth.
In a sense we become gardeners tending the spiritual development of our kids. God places the spark of life in the seed. We can't control that or how the plant eventually matures. But we can make sure the soil is rich, the ground is generously watered, the weeds are kept at bay, and the opportunity for sunlight is freely available. We can raise our children in environments where having a heart for God is the norm and not the exception.
What we don't want to generate are well-behaved kids who mindlessly follow our directions without ever willfully owning the faith in Jesus that they see in us. In the long run, the goal of parenting isn't for our kids to be known for how well-behaved they are, but for how well they know and respond to God.
Part of our challenge is to communicate to our kids a worldview that supports right actions. It's true that we (and they) will be held accountable for our behavior based on God's instructions to us. But whether or not we obey those instructions has a lot to do with whether or not we really believe God's story--a biblical worldview--and whether or not we walk in God's power.
In that way, our children's behavior is kind of like the tip of an iceberg. From countless illustrations we all know that the part of the iceberg that rises above the waterline is just a fraction of its total size. As such, you could conceivably make all kinds of alterations to the exposed part of the iceberg--in other words, the outward stuff (behaviors)--without significantly altering the iceberg itself.
What we've got to get at--in our own lives and in the lives of our kids--is the 80 percent of the berg that's under the waterline. In our illustration that represents one's worldview. We believe our behavior is ultimately driven by our understanding of the way the world works, of what we believe to be true and false about the universe, of our perception of reality.
And that's what we want to focus on as Real World Parents. How can we communicate God's worldview to our kids? What story are we telling them about the universe, both intentionally and--more importantly--in the way we live with and for God over time?
Before you move on to the next chapter, ask yourself these questions:
1. When you imagine God looking at your family, what do you think God sees? What do you believe God's desire for your family is?
2. When you look at the world your children are living in, do you believe it's better or worse compared to when you were growing up? Why?
3. Which matters more to you--that your children demonstrate good behavior, or that your children understand and believe in a biblical worldview? Why?
4. In your own life, what has mattered more in the long run--your behavior on any given day or your foundational beliefs about God and the world?
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Katie Brazelton, Ph.D., M.Div., M.A., is a life coach and bestselling author. She is the founder of Life Purpose Coaching Centers International, which trains Christians worldwide to become Life Purpose Coach professionals and assist others to discover and fulfill God’s plan for their lives. Dr. Brazelton was formerly a licensed minister and director of women’s Bible studies at Saddleback Church and now is a professor at Rockbridge Seminary. She lives in Southern California and has two children and two grandchildren. She is the author of the bestselling series Pathway to Purpose for Women and Character Makeover: 40 Days with a Life Coach to Create the Best You.
List Price: $14.99 Paperback: 160 pages Publisher: Howard Books; Original edition (February 2, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1439135606 ISBN-13: 978-1439135600
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Introduction
Imagine that you and I are being pampered in first class, relaxing comfortably on an afternoon flight to your favorite world-class resort. As we gaze out the airplane window, it seems as though we're floating through an endless sea of marshmallow clouds, soaring together through the heavens. Up here, dreams somehow seem crystal clear. I think it's because we can pretend we've risen above the rough, mountainous terrain of life and can look down on our hills and valleys, seeing events from a fresh perspective.
From this bird's-eye view, glance down at what is below: your daily routine, closest relationships, untapped potential, and countless opportunities. Let this vantage point help you set your sights on a passionate megadream and an inspiring hope for the future!
I would not dare to author a book on such an important topic as Living Big without practicing what I preach. So, as I write this, I am on a flight to Hawaii (I wish it were first class) for an extended stay to consider living there indefinitely. I was raised in Hawaii and the Marshall Islands in a navy family, so the tropical breeze has always been alluring to me. Might this be where I will plant another Life Purpose Coaching Center...or find the time to launch my long-dreamed-of radio show...or finish this book? I don't know the answers to those questions, but I do know that I can't fail, because this is simply an experiment, with memories waiting to be made. I'm not going to rush the process or force a decision, only enjoy the journey to yea or nay. There is no right or wrong way to dream.
Well, actually, I do believe there's one wrong way, and that is to let the dream stagnate without taking any action!
I am embarking on this time of exploration because I am in a new season of my life, formally ending two decades of single parenting. My son recently accepted an out-of-state job promotion, taking his sweet wife and my two young grandsons with him. Shortly thereafter, my daughter announced her engagement, which means she, too, will be moving away from our home area. In the blink of an eye, without my permission, I have been thrust into a new chapter of my life. On one hand, I am sad and fearful. On the other hand, now I have no more excuses for not doing whatever I want, which is another way of saying "whatever I feel God is calling me to do next."
I am operating in a spirit of supersized living right now, and not just because I may soon be draped in large muumuus, walking barefoot to the local market to buy macadamia-nut chocolates, and blatantly enticing my family with extended holiday vacations in paradise.
Dreaming in high definition and surround sound -- and then taking appropriate steps to live those dreams -- is what this book is all about. You may not have a burning desire to move to a distant land, but what do you want out of life? Are you a student anxiously finishing college? A young mom who's busy raising twins? An overseas missionary on a brand-new assignment? A career woman vying for an enviable position? A widow with only a few pressing obligations? Regardless of your role in life, you and I have a few things in common:
- We love to dream.
- God designed us to dream.
- And there's no day like today to start discovering God's best!
I need you to know that I'm not so far up in the clouds that I am unaware of your everyday realities. Life has prepared me well to be your Life Coach. I have a testimony of brokenness, and I'm honored to help you dream. Check out what I call "My 7 Big D's" -- events that shaped me for nearly twenty years.
My 7 Big D's
1982 Barely survived a serious, four-month depression.
1986 Devastated by a totally unexpected divorce.
1988 Confused about having to rewrite my doctoral dissertation.
1990 Deeply saddened by the death of my exhusband.
1991 Angered by a corporate downsizing, which left me laid off just days after buying a home.
1993 Terrified by a dating incident.
2001 Shocked by the death of my dream when my first book contract was canceled due to budget cuts after 9/11.
What does this list tell you, other than that I must have built up a lot of stamina by now? It says that you can trust me to understand what you're going through and to tell it like it is when I coach you -- without skirting around the issues. I care deeply about making sure you don't get stuck in the quagmire of life, as I did too many times.
These chapters will take you on a journey to find what you're really jazzed about -- what makes you smile, laugh, play, sing, and dance. It's time to daydream about the adventure God has in store for you!
Amos 4:13 tells us that God reveals His thoughts to us: "He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals his thoughts to mortals, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth -- the Lord God Almighty is his name." We want to do whatever it takes to be ready for that revelation.
As your Life Coach, I will come alongside you like a Barnabas (a name that Acts 4:36 tells us means "son of encouragement"). We will enjoy life-changing chats about you, stealing precious moments within your hectic schedule. I know how hard it is for you to find time for a conversation about your legacy, your destiny, your divine urge. As you are able to sneak away from your daily routine, it will be my job and my joy to sit with you and draw out of you the distinct calling God laid on your heart eons ago, before you were ever born. And then, equally important, we will put baby steps in place to help you live out your exciting, God-designed purpose, which has long been the desire in your soul even if it has lain dormant.
This book is loaded with modern, true stories of everyday saints, Bible character parallels, inspirational quotes, some of my favorite Scripture verses, heartfelt prayers, ten coaching tips, forty action steps, reflection questions, and practical exercises with sample answers from my own life to trigger your thinking. (Don't miss the Web downloads, too, which are my special gift to you!) You will hear from real women -- students, wives, mothers, a widow, career women, church staff members -- who all have tremendous testimonies to share. I urge you to break all of the normal book-reading rules and jump into the chapters in any sequence you please. Did you know that doing the unexpected can change your perspective, which will then cause you to see your world through new eyes?
I've chosen these particular topics for us to explore in detail as we discover what it takes to Live Big!
1. Face Your Fears
2. Learn to Exhale
3. Honor Your Deepest Longings
4. Don't Ever Give Up
5. Use Your Past for Good
6. Expect Miracles
7. Forgive Someone
8. Eat Dessert First
9. Ask Jesus for Vision
10. Capture Your Live Big! Dream
I can't help but think: If only someone had told me that! or Why didn't I learn that in school? Frankly, I feel there ought to be a law mandating that schools teach us to be tenacious, forgiving, and courageous. We need classes at church that help us reach for our dreams, expect miracles, focus forward, and breathe calmly through adversity. But most important, we must learn how to play and to stop taking ourselves so seriously and to start cherishing God's incredibly specific plan for our lives. In this way, we address the habits that help us attract or sabotage God's boldest wishes for us.
Each of the ten coaching tips will give you a broader, richer understanding of how to run and finish the race well.
You probably picked up this book because you want to travel boldly down the path to purpose and fulfillment, yet perhaps you've lost sight of your dreams, hopes, and longings -- possibly because of regrets, exhaustion, stubbornness, fears, sins, and so on. We're all burdened with something. You want to bring glory to God with your life, but you may be carrying such a heavy weight of boredom, loneliness, doubt, pride, and/or hopelessness that you've forgotten how to unleash your creativity. The biblical perspective in this book will help you hear God's promptings more clearly and act on them with pure joy.
I encourage you to dream big dreams during this eyeopening, heart-pounding quest. Let me share with you forty proven, incremental steps that I personally have used for years and have coached my clients through -- action steps that will help you to live a significance-filled life. God will be honored, and you will be blessed. You will find yourself empowered beyond your wildest imagination as you Live Big!
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
***Three cheers for Mavis Sanders of Tyndale House Publishers for getting the FIRST group the chapter needed for the tour!***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Susan May Warren is the RITA award-winning author of twenty-four novels with Tyndale, Barbour and Steeple Hill. A four-time Christy award finalist, a two-time RITA Finalist, she's also a multi-winner of the Inspirational Readers Choice award, and the ACFW Book of the Year. Her larger than life characters and layered plots have won her acclaim with readers and reviewers alike. A seasoned women's events and retreats speaker, she's a popular writing teacher at conferences around the nation and the author of the beginning writer's workbook: From the Inside-Out: discover, create and publish the novel in you! She is also the founder of www.MyBookTherapy.com, a story-crafting service that helps authors discover their voice. Susan makes her home in northern Minnesota, where she is busy cheering on her two sons in football, and her daughter in local theater productions (and desperately missing her college-age son!)
A full listing of her titles, reviews and awards can be found at her website.
Product Details:
List Price: $13.99 Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (January 11, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1414313136 ISBN-13: 978-1414313139
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
PJ Sugar had been born to sneak up on people. She clearly possessed the instincts of a panther, with the ability to find her prey and slink up to them in the shadows, pouncing only when they least suspected.
Suspected adulterer Rudy Bagwell didn’t have a prayer of escaping.
“I’m telling you, Jeremy, we’re going to nail him this time.” She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to keep her voice to a hoarse whisper into the cell phone—or even to slink down in the bucket seat of her VW Bug. It wasn’t like Rudy or his cohort in crime, Geri Fitz, would hear her.
PJ glanced at the digital clock on the dash. It glared 2:14 a.m., a resounding gavel bang to Rudy’s guilt. After all, who would be sneaking around after midnight?
Without, er, a good reason. Like a stakeout.
“I followed him to the Windy Oaks Motel off Highway 12,” PJ continued. She glanced at the soot-dark picture window next to the peeling door of the ancient one-story motel. A brass number 8, slanted at a corrupt angle, glared against the parking lot lights as if spotlighting the sin behind the closed doors.
If she were picking a location to have a tryst with her old high school sweetheart, she might have aimed higher than a graying yellow motel edged with weeds, a broken swing set, a muddy sandbox, and a Dumpster stuffed with a ripped prison-striped mattress. Oh, the romance.
Just sitting in the greasy parking lot made her itch, as if she might be the one engaging in the skulduggery.
Now that she was a PI in training, she got to use words like that. She had even highlighted this one in the Basics of Private Investigation manual Jeremy had assigned her to read as part of her apprenticeship. She had read the “Stakeout” chapter three times. And, if she did say so herself, had the “Tailing Your Suspect” techniques down to a science.
Nope, Rudy wasn’t getting away with cheating on his wife. Not with PJ Sugar on the job.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Jeremy spoke through the gravel in his voice, obviously dredged from a deep sleep.
She heard a faint siren on the other end of the line and did the math. “Are you sleeping at the office again?”
“I worked late. Are you sure it’s Rudy?”
“Of course it’s Rudy. He’s exactly the same dirtbag he was in high school—pockmarked face, a permanent scowl. He was even wearing his leather jacket, which seems suspicious given that it’s August and about seventy degrees out . . .”
“PJ . . .”
She heard him sigh, could imagine Jeremy running his wide hand over his face, through the dark grizzle of his late-night shadow and over his curly, thinning hair. “I’m not sure that I’m up to your PI prowess tonight. Have I ever told you that you’re hard to handle?”
“Every day. Now, get out of bed and bring your camera equipment. Oh, Cynthie is going to be thrilled! I promised her we were going to take down her cheatin’ husband.”
And Cynthie wasn’t the only one to whom she’d promised results. She’d also made a plethora of private promises to herself. A brand-new job, a brand-new life . . . this time she wasn’t going to quit or take the fastest route out of town. She was getting this done, no matter what the cost.
“See, this is your problem, PJ. You make promises you can’t keep. Two weeks, and Rudy hasn’t been seen doing anything more notorious than ordering extra whip on his macchiato. I’m thinking Cynthie is dreaming his affair. And speaking of dreaming, that’s what I should be doing. And you too. Get home. Go to bed.”
“I’m on the case, Jeremy. A great PI follows her instincts, and I know Rudy’s hooked back up with Geri. You should have seen those two in high school—in the halls, wrapped in each other’s arms, making out by the lockers—”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“I’m just saying, they were an item, and sparks like that never die.”
Silence throbbed on the other end of the phone.
PJ closed her eyes.
“Really.” The word from Jeremy came out small, without much emotion, but PJ felt it like a jab to her heart, even put a hand to her chest.
In some cases, she wanted to add. But not always. Or maybe, yes, always. She wasn’t sure, not with her return to her hometown of Kellogg, Minnesota, right into the bull’s-eye of her high school heartthrob, Daniel “Boone” Buckam, bad boy–turned–detective, who had decided their old flames might be worth stirring up.
PJ had spent too many years roaming the country with his name still simmering in her heart to ignore the fire there.
But Jeremy Kane, PI, had given her a job, even though so far, two months into her gig, Jeremy still hadn’t let her run with her instincts, hadn’t let her handle her own cases. She knew she could be his right-hand gal if he’d just give her a chance.
So she couldn’t find the right reply for him now, as she sat in the darkness of her Bug, alone, knowing she’d been driven out of her bed and from a sound night’s sleep by the stirring desire to prove herself. And maybe something else . . . something she didn’t especially want to talk about. At least not with Jeremy, her boss.
Boss. She needed to write that word on her hand or something. Jeremy was her boss.
“We got ’em, Jeremy. And if we can get pictures, then we’ll have done our job. So get over here.”
“PJ, sometimes . . .” But she heard silence on the other end before she had a chance to tell him that she would surely appreciate some Cheetos and a Diet Coke. Investigative work made a person hungry.
Thirty minutes later Jeremy tapped on her window, looking bedraggled and annoyed.
But because he could read her mind, he held in his hand two cold sodas.
“Scoot over,” he snarled as he climbed in beside her, handing her a soda. His scowl only enhanced his hard-edged former Navy SEAL persona, all dark eyes; wide, ropy-muscled shoulders; trim waist; and long legs. He wore a black T-shirt, a pair of dark jeans, and black Converse shoes that made him melt into the night.
In fact, he sort of matched her, something he made note of as his gaze slid over her. “Is this Sneaky PJ? Black from head to toe? Where are your Superman pants?”
“Hey, a girl has to dress the part. You taught me that.”
Only, in her black leggings and oversize black sweatshirt, she looked more sloppy than dangerous. Apparently only Jeremy could pull that off. She’d first discovered the black ops side of Jeremy Kane the night he’d cajoled her into sneaking into the Kellogg Country Club. She’d nearly been caught when she froze in the bright lights of near discovery.
On the spot, Jeremy, the person she’d believed to be a pizza delivery guy, had morphed into GI Joe, scooping her into his arms and hiding her behind boxes of golf shirts, gripping his flashlight like a lethal weapon.
The memory still sent a forbidden thrill through her, one she didn’t know how to interpret.
And she still, on occasion, called him Pizza Man.
Jeremy didn’t smile, just opened his own soda with a hush, took a swig, and wiped his mouth with his hand. “So, any changes?”
“Rudy hasn’t ordered out for pizza, if that’s what you mean. Did you bring the camera?”
He shrugged a strap off his shoulder and dumped a bag onto her lap, then levered his seat back and closed his eyes. “I’ve created a monster.”
PJ opened the bag and began fitting the long-range digital camera together.
Three hours later, she nudged Jeremy awake. She’d quietly sung through the score of The Phantom of the Opera as well as her complete knowledge of the Beatles and ABBA repertoires, then played “I’m going to the beach and I’m bringing . . .” from A to Z twice and tried to read the chapter titled “How to Find Missing Persons” with the neon blue light attached to her key chain.
She’d even rummaged through her canvas purse that Jeremy referred to as “the abyss,” found a bottle of pink polish, and refreshed her pedicure.
Still, a gal could sit in silence for only so long.
“Smile, this is for posterity.” PJ held the digital camera out as far as her arm would reach, leaned her head in toward his, and depressed the button.
Light flashed like a bullet, shooting her vision with dots against the gray pallor of morning.
“What are you doing?” Jeremy whipped out his arm and snatched the camera from her hand. “Are you trying to get us made?”
“Oh yes, I’m sure they’re glued to the window as we speak.”
He scrolled through the previous shots. “What is this—pictures of your toes?”
“I have cute toes. And I was bored. Delete them if you want.”
Outside, dew glistened on the car hood. She’d rolled up her window, wishing she’d brought along a jacket when she tiptoed out of her sister’s house in the wee hours of the morning, and now shivered. She clamped her hand over a yawn. “I hope they’re not late sleepers.”
“I can’t believe he hasn’t snuck out back to Cynthie yet.” Jeremy popped his seat up and reached for his now-warm soda. PJ said nothing when he noted it was nearly gone.
“Is that what the cheaters usually do—sneak out for their trysts and then back to their wives before dawn?”
“Sometimes. Depends. The ones who work downtown usually disappear at lunchtime.”
“Is PI work always so . . . slimy? I feel a little dirty, like I need a shower or something.”
“I have news for you, PJ. You do need a shower.”
“Seriously, don’t we get to solve a real crime? like a murder or something?”
In the receding shadows, Jeremy looked less menacing, although she’d once seen him shoot a man. “Be thankful for the boring ones. They don’t hurt.”
She didn’t respond. But she had thought that being a PI—or rather a PI’s assistant—might be more, well, fun. Instead, she’d spent two tedious months parked behind a desk, filing reports, answering Jeremy’s calls. Only recently had he invited her to keep him company on his stakeouts.
She longed for high action. Undercover ops and maybe even some karate. In fact . . . “Maybe I should sign up for one of Sergei’s tae kwon do classes. I think it would help.”
“What—in understanding Korean? or maybe Russian so you can help Connie with the in-laws?”
“Very funny. No, in taking down criminals.”
Jeremy ran a finger and thumb against his eyes. Sighed. “Why don’t I send you on a mission?”
“A mission? I’d love to—”
“Get us some donuts.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Good Mornin’ Donuts’ light just went on.”
“Is that all I am to you—a delivery girl?”
The minute the words left her mouth, PJ knew she was asking for trouble. Jeremy wore the inklings of a very devilish smile. “Oh, don’t get me started.”
Perhaps Boone wasn’t the only one trying to kindle a flame.
Jeremy held her gaze and shook his head. “Maybe stakeouts aren’t such a great idea.”
“I’ll get the donuts.”
Since she’d parked next to a wall deep in the shadows of the Chinese takeout place, she had to wait for Jeremy to climb out of the Bug before she piled over the driver’s seat. He held open the door for her and she scrambled out without looking at him.
“I’ll take a bismark.”
“What is that—the battleship of all donuts?” She laughed at her own joke.
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “A donut covered in chocolate and filled with custard.” He shook his head as he climbed back into the Bug and closed the door.
Sounded like a long john to her. If they were going to work together, they’d need to nail down their donut terminology.
The cool air raised gooseflesh on her skin as she jogged across the parking lot toward the donut shop. The sun, just a sparkle of hope on the horizon, edged into the metal gray sky, and she smelled summer in the tang of grass freshened by the morning dew. Her Converse slapped against the concrete as she hustled to the doors.
The reception area inside remained dark in the early morning shadows. Lifeless. Void of donuts. She cupped her hand over her eyes and peered through the glass, her stomach clenching in dismay. “Hello in there!”
No one. She knocked on the glass door and then spied someone inside wearing a white apron, moving around in the baking area.
“Hello! We need donuts!”
From the back, a body appeared—a teenager with dyed black hair, a lip ring, and darty black eyes, his apron strings wrapped twice around his noodle-thin body (the boy needed to consume his own product). PJ banged on the window, and he jumped as if she might be wielding a rocket launcher.
Good grief, she just wanted a donut. “Are you open?”
The boy drifted toward the front of the store almost surreptitiously, as if he might be letting in the Mongol horde through the gates of the castle.
He unlocked the door, cracking it just wide enough for his lips to fit through. “We’re not open yet.”
PJ wrapped her arms around herself and tried to appear as waiflike as possible. “Oh, please, please, I’m starved.”
He eyed her warily.
“I spent the night in my car.” She added a little shiver. Looked pitiful. Smiled.
He might have believed her—and now her less-than-dangerous attire might have actually worked in her favor—because he opened the door. “Quick. In the back.”
PJ slunk in, the ever-present danger of a raid hovering over the moment. But never let it be said that when Jeremy sent her on a mission, she returned empty-handed.
She scampered into the back room, where she discovered trays of glistening amber donut holes, freshly glazed. The entire room smelled of baking bread, sugar glaze, and the heady indulgence of chocolate. “I’ll take a dozen holes and a bismark—” she glanced at his name tag—“Phillip.” She held out a ten-dollar bill, intimating that he keep the change.
After all, that’s what PIs did . . . paid for information. Or donuts.
Whatever it took to complete the mission.
Phillip boxed up the holes and the bismark, took the ten, and honest Abe that he was, headed to the front to make change. He stopped short at the threshold to the front parlor. “It’s my boss,” he whispered. He turned and, for a guy already sorta pasty, went even whiter. “Hurry, please . . . go out the back.”
She’d never been kicked out of a bakery before. But to save her new hero . . . she turned and pushed on the metal door, letting it swish shut behind her.
PJ was standing in the back alley next to a Dumpster, a beat-up red Honda, and a pile of old, broken pallets, holding the donut box and giving serious contemplation to digging in right there, when she spied him—Rudy Bagwell, sneaking out a back window of the Windy Oaks Motel.
Oh, she was good at this job.
From this angle she watched Rudy hit the ground and skirt along the back of the motel unit, on the way to freedom.
Sneaky. But not too sneaky for her, the Panther.
PJ hiked the box under her arm and crossed the road, hoping Jeremy saw her angle toward her quarry. Even if he couldn’t spot Rudy from his angle, a guy with a eye out for his donuts should know to wake up and grab his camera.
Rudy had stopped at the edge of the motel, leaning away from the wind to light a cigarette.
She slowed her pace and strolled up to him as if she’d just been out early for a donut run. “Hey there.”
He glanced at her, and for a second she wondered if he would recognize her—after all, she did have one vivid recollection of a wild high school beach party when he’d passed out and she and Boone had buried him to his waist in sand.
He grunted at her and blew out a long stream of smoke.
“Beautiful morning.”
He grunted again, rolling the cigarette between two fingers. He didn’t look like a man who’d spent the night in the arms of his beloved high school sweetheart. In fact, he had a rather ugly welt on his chin, and also, if she looked closely—although she didn’t make it obvious—a splatter of blood down his white shirt, maybe from a bloody nose. Or his lip—it looked a little puffy.
She took a step back, glancing toward Jeremy. Movement in the VW parked in the shadows across the lot was too difficult to discern from here. But Rudy would have to cross in front of the motel to retrieve his Camaro. Jeremy could get the shot then.
So why had Rudy come this way—around the back, away from his wheels?
“Is there something you want, babe?” Rudy cocked his head at her. “Don’t I know you?”
She shook her head. “No, I—”
His eyes widened. “PJ Sugar.” He said it slowly, with a hint of a snarl—maybe he did remember the beach party—and pushed himself away from the building. “I’d heard you were back in town. Cynthie said she saw your picture in the paper. You solved Hoffman’s murder . . .” His gaze went from her to the parking lot.
“Want a donut?” She shoved the box toward him.
Rudy turned back to her, his smile now gone. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting donuts.” Only it came out more like a question. Oops, she’d have to work on her lying.
He took a step toward her . . . and that’s when she saw it. Right above the waist of his jeans, small and black, hidden by the leather jacket that, despite the chill in the air, still didn’t belong in an August wardrobe.
A gun. As if it had claws, it tore at her gaze and PJ couldn’t wrench it away.
A gun.
Blood on his shirt. A bloodied lip. A crime of passion? She added up the facts as quickly as it took Rudy to move another step toward her and snake out his hand to grab her.
But he wasn’t the only one with a weapon. She shoved her hand into the box just as Rudy’s grip closed around her elbow.
With everything inside her, PJ slammed the bismark into his face. Pudding squished between her fingers as she crammed it into his eyes. Then, clutching the box to her chest, she yanked her arm from his grasp and ran.
“Jeremy!”
Footsteps slapping the pavement behind her made her dig into the box again. Her hand closed around a donut hole, and she pitched it behind her as she raced across the parking lot. “Jeremy!”
Another hole, followed by an expletive from behind her. Thankfully, Jeremy had finally come alive, because he emerged from the Bug, staring at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“He’s got a gun! He killed her! He killed Geri!”
Another naughty word from Rudy and the footsteps changed direction. She turned to see Rudy flinging himself toward his Camaro. He Bo Duke’d across the hood and climbed in the window, turning the engine over even as PJ threw another hole at him.
It landed with a splotch of sugary goo on his windshield.
He gunned the hot rod across the parking lot.
PJ dropped the box, her breath wheezing out of her even as she watched him escape.
Or maybe not. As Rudy mowed over a parked Harley and smacked against a Ford Fiesta, she heard another car gunning to roadblock him.
She turned too quickly, wishing she had more time to brace herself.
No.
No!
She nearly flung her body in front of Jeremy as he screeched past her in the VW, a laser streak of lime green on course to intersect with its target.
“Jeremy, stop!”
But Jeremy didn’t know that, one, she hadn’t paid her insurance for over a month, and two, the brakes on the Bug were a little on the spongy side, because he didn’t even slow as he T-boned Rudy’s Camaro and pinned it against the metal pole hosting the Windy Oaks sign.
The sound of metal ripping and the dying whine of her beloved Bug buckled PJ’s knees. She went down hard in the gravel, gulping a breath, watching Jeremy leap from the car, dive over her hood, and rip the gun out of Rudy’s grip before he could even clear his head.
Pinned, he screamed at the top of his lungs.
PJ slumped in the gravel of the lot. Not the Bug. Her Bug. The one remaining possession big enough to hide inside. She reached into the box and pulled out her remaining donut hole, considering it for a long moment as her mind faintly registered the wailing police sirens in the distance. Or maybe the noise came from her, from the keening inside.
Jeremy sauntered toward her, a smug smile in his evil eyes, shaking his head. “I don’t suppose there’s a bismark in that mess, is there?”
PJ leaned back, cupped her hand over her eyes, and hurled the donut hole at his arrogant smile.
***NOTE: I wasn't on the list to receive this book, so I don't have a review. But, I still hope to get myself a copy, eventually, and will add a review once I've had a chance to do so, and have read the book!. ***
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Tricia Goyer is the author of several books, including Night Song and Dawn of a Thousand Nights, both past winners of the ACFW's Book of the Year Award for Long Historical Romance. Goyer lives with her family in Montana.
Mike Yorkey is the author or coauthor of dozens of books, including the bestselling Every Man's Battle series. Married to a Swiss native, Yorkey lived in Switzerland for 18 months. He and his family currently reside in California.
List Price: $13.99 Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Revell (October 1, 2009) Language: English ISBN-10: 0800733363 ISBN-13: 978-0800733360
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
To the Reader
In the early afternoon of July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenberg confidently lugged a sturdy briefcase into Wolfsschanze—Wolf’s Lair—the East Prussian redoubt of Adolf Hitler. Inside the black briefcase, a small but powerful bomb ticked away, counting down the minutes to der Führer’s demise.
Several generals involved in the assassination plot arranged to have Stauffenberg invited to a routine staff meeting with Hitler and two dozen officers. The one o’clock conference was held in the map room of Wolfsschanze’s cement-lined underground bunker. Stauffenberg quietly entered the conference a bit tardy and managed to get close to Hitler by claiming he was hard of hearing. While poring over detailed topological maps of the Eastern Front’s war theater, the colonel unobtrusively set the briefcase underneath the heavy oak table near Hitler’s legs. After waiting for an appropriate amount of time, Stauffenberg excused himself and quietly exited the claustrophobic bunker, saying he had to place an urgent call to Berlin. When a Wehrmacht officer noticed the bulky briefcase was in his way, he inconspicuously moved it away from Hitler, placing it behind the other substantial oak support. That simple event turned the tide of history.
Moments later, a terrific explosion catapulted one officer to the ceiling, ripped off the legs of others, and killed four soldiers instantly. Although the main force of the blast was directed away from Hitler, the German leader nonetheless suffered burst eardrums, burned hair, and a wounded arm. He was in shock but still alive—and unhinged for revenge.
Stauffenberg, believing Hitler was dead, leaped into a staff car with his aide Werner von Haeften. They talked their way out of the Wolfsschanze compound and made a dash for a nearby airfield, where they flew back to Berlin in a Heinkel He 111. When news got out that Hitler had survived, Stauffenberg and three other conspirators were quickly tracked down, captured, and executed at midnight by a makeshift firing squad.
An enraged Hitler did not stop there to satisfy his bloodlust. For the next month and a half, he instigated a bloody purge, resulting in the execution of dozens of plotters and hundreds of others remotely involved in the assassination coup. The Gestapo, no doubt acting under Hitler’s orders, treated the failed attempt on the Führer’s life as a pretext for arresting 5,000 opponents of the Third Reich, many of whom were imprisoned and tortured.
What many people do not know is that Hitler’s manhunt would dramatically alter the development of a secret weapon that could turn the tide of the war for Nazi Germany—the atomic bomb.
This is that story . . .
1
Waldshut, Germany
Saturday, July 29, 1944
4 p.m.
He hoped his accent wouldn’t give him away. The young Swiss kept his head down as he sauntered beneath the frescoed archways that ringed the town square of Waldshut, an attractive border town in the foothills of the southern Schwarzwald. He hopped over a foot-wide, waterfilled trench that ran through the middle of the cobblestone square and furtively glanced behind to see if anyone had detected his presence.
Even though Switzerland lay just a kilometer or two away across the Rhine River, the youthful operative realized he no longer breathed free air. Though he felt horribly exposed—as if he were marching down Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm screaming anti-Nazi slogans—he willed himself to remain confident.
His part was a small but vital piece of the larger war effort. Yes, he risked his life, but he was not alone in his passion. A day’s drive away, American tanks drove for the heart of
Paris—and quickened French hearts for libération. Far closer, Nazi reprisals thinned the ranks of his fellow resisters. The young man shuddered at the thought of being captured, lined up against a wall, and hearing the click-click of a safety being unlatched from a Nazi machine gun. Still, his legs propelled him on.
Earlier that morning, he’d introduced himself as Jean- Pierre to members of an underground cell. The French Resistance had recently stepped up their acts of sabotage after the Allies broke out of the Normandy beachhead two weeks earlier, and they’d all taken nom de guerres in their honor.
Inside the pocket of his leather jacket, Jean-Pierre’s right hand formed a claw around a Mauser C96 semiautomatic pistol. His grip tightened, as if squeezing the gun’s metallic profile would reduce the tension building in his chest. The last few minutes before an operation always came to this.
His senses peaked as he took in the sights and sounds around him. At one end of the town square, a pair of disheveled older women complained to a local farmer about the fingerling size of the potato crop. A horse-drawn carriage, transporting four galvanized tin milk containers, rumbled by while a young newsboy screamed out, “Nachrichten!” The boy’s right hand waved day-old copies of the Badische Zeitung from Freiburg, eighty kilometers to the northwest.
Jean-Pierre didn’t need to read the newspaper to know that more men and women were losing their lives by the minute due to the reprisals of a madman.
Though the planned mission had been analyzed from every angle, there were always uncertain factors that would affect not only the outcome of the mission but who among them would live. Or die.
Their task was to rescue a half-dozen men arrested by local authorities following the assassination attempt on Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler. If things went as Jean-Pierre hoped,
the men would soon be free from the Nazis’ clutches. If not, the captives’ fate included an overnight trip to Berlin, via a cattle car, where they would be transported to Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8. The men would be questioned—tortured if they weren’t immediately forthcoming— until names, dates, and places gushed as freely as the blood spilling upon the cold, unyielding concrete floor.
Not that revealing any secrets would save their lives. When the last bit of information had been wrung from their minds, they’d be marched against a blood-spattered wall or to the gallows equipped with well-stretched hemp rope. May God have mercy on their souls.
Jean-Pierre willed himself to stop thinking pessimistically. He glanced at his watch—a pricey Hanhart favored by Luftwaffe pilots. His own Swiss-made Breitling had been tucked inside a wooden box on his nightstand back home, where he had also left a handwritten letter. A love note, actually, to a woman who had captured his heart—just in case he never returned. But this was a time for war, not love. And he had
to keep reminding himself of that.
Jean-Pierre slowed his gait as he left the town square and approached the town’s major intersection. As he had been advised, a uniformed woman—her left arm ringed with a red
armband and black swastika—directed traffic with a whistle and an attitude.
She was like no traffic cop he’d ever seen. Her full lips were colored with red lipstick. Black hair tumbled upon the shoulder epaulettes of the Verkehrskontrolle’s gray-green
uniform. She wielded a silver-toned baton, directing a rambling assortment of horse-drawn carriages, battered sedans, and hulking military vehicles jockeying for the right of way.
She looked no older than twenty-five, yet acted like she owned the real estate beneath her feet. Jean-Pierre couldn’t help but let his lips curl up in a slight grin, knowing what was
to come. “Entschuldigung, wo ist das Gemeindehaus?” a voice said beside him. Jean-Pierre turned to the rotund businessman in the fedora and summer business suit asking for directions to City Hall.
“Ich bin nicht sicher.” He shrugged and was about to fashion another excuse when a military transport truck turned a corner two blocks away, approaching in their direction.
“Es tut mir Leid.” With a wave, Jean-Pierre excused himself and sprinted toward the uniformed traffic officer. In one quick motion, his Mauser was drawn.
He didn’t break stride as he tackled the uniformed woman to the ground. Her scream blasted his ear, and more cries from onlookers chimed in.
Jean-Pierre straddled the frightened traffic officer and pressed the barrel of his pistol into her forehead. Her shrieking immediately ceased.
“Don’t move, and nothing will happen to you.”
Jean-Pierre glanced up as he heard the mud-caked transport truck skid to a stop fifty meters from them.
A Wehrmacht soldier hopped out. “Halt!” He clumsily drew his rifle to his right shoulder.
Jean-Pierre met the soldier’s eyes and rolled off the female traffic officer.
A shot rang out. The German soldier’s body jerked, and a cry of pain erupted from his lips. He clutched his left chest as a rivulet of blood stained his uniform.
“Nice shot, Suzanne.” Jean-Pierre jumped to his feet, glancing at the traffic cop, her stomach against the asphalt with her pistol drawn.
Suzanne rose from the ground, crouched, and aimed.
Her pistol, which had been hidden in an ankle holster, was now pointed at the driver behind the windshield. The determined look in her gaze was one Jean-Pierre had come to
know well.
One, two, three shots found their mark, shattering the truck’s glass into shards. The driver slumped behind the wheel.
As expected, two Wehrmacht soldiers jumped out of the back of the truck and took cover behind the rear wheels.
Before Jean-Pierre had a chance to take aim, shots rang out from a second-story window overlooking the intersection.
The German soldiers crumbled to the cobblestone pavement in a heap.
“Los jetzt!” He clasped Suzanne’s hand, and they sprinted to the rear of the truck. Two black-leather-coated members of their resistance group had already beaten them there.
Jean- Pierre couldn’t remember their names, but it didn’t matter.
What mattered was the safety of the prisoners in the truck. Jean-Pierre only hoped the contact’s information had been correct.
With a deep breath, he lifted the curtain and peered into the truck. A half-dozen frightened men sat on wooden benches with hands raised. Their wide eyes and dropped jaws displayed their fear.
“Don’t shoot!” one cried.
The sound of a police siren split the air.
“Everyone out!” Jean-Pierre shouted. “I’ll take this one. The rest of you, go with them.” He pointed the tip of his Mauser at the men in leather jackets.
The sirens increased in volume as the speeding car gobbled up distance along the Hauptstrasse, weaving through the autos and pedestrians. An officer in the passenger’s seat leaned out, rifle pointed.
Jean-Pierre leaned into the truck and yanked the prisoner’s arm. Suzanne grabbed the other. “Move it, come on!”
Bullets from an approaching vehicle whizzed past Jean- Pierre’s ear. The clearly frightened prisoner suddenly found his legs, and the three sprinted away from the speedingcar.
Jean-Pierre’s feet pounded the pavement, and he tugged on the prisoner’s arm, urging him to run faster. He could hear the screech of the tires as the police car stopped just behind the truck. Jean-Pierre hadn’t expected the local Polizei to respond so rapidly.
They needed to find cover—
More gunfire erupted, and as if reading his thoughts, Suzanne turned the prisoner toward a weathered column. Jean-Pierre crumbled against the pillar, catching his breath.
The columns provided cover, but not enough. Soon the police would be upon them. They had to make a move. Only ten steps separated them from turning the street corner and sprinting into Helmut’s watch store. From there, a car waited outside the back door.
Another hail of gunfire struck the plaster. Jean-Pierre mouthed a prayer under his breath.
“Suzanne, we have to get out of here!”
She crouched into a trembling ball, all confidence gone. “They’re surrounding us!” The terror in her uncertain timbre was clear. “But what can we do? We can’t let them see us run into the store.”
“Forget that. We have no choice!” Jean-Pierre raised his pistol and returned several volleys, firing at the two policemen perched behind a parked car.
“Listen to me,” he said to Suzanne, taking his eyes momentarily off the police car. “You have to go. You take this guy, and I’ll cover you. Once you turn the corner, it’s just twenty more meters to Helmut’s store.” His hands moved as he spoke, slamming a new clip of ammunition into his pistol.
“But what if—”
“I’ll join you. Now go!”
Jean-Pierre jumped from behind the protection of the column and rapidly fired several shots. One cop dared expose himself to return fire—not at Jean-Pierre but at the pair running for the corner.
No!
Jean-Pierre turned just in time to see Suzanne’s body lurch. The clean hit ripped into her flesh between the shoulder blades. She staggered for a long second before dropping
with a thud. The gangly prisoner didn’t even look back as he disappeared around the corner.
I can’t lose him, Jean-Pierre thought, remembering again the importance of this mission.
Yet to chase after the prisoner meant he’d have to leave his partner behind.
Suzanne . . .
He emptied his Mauser at the hidden policemen, ducking as he scrambled toward his partner. Sweeping up her bloody form, he managed to drag her around the corner to safety.
“Go,” Suzanne whispered.
“I can’t leave you. Stay with me—”
Her eyelids fluttered. “You need to go . . .” A long breath escaped, and her gaze fixed on a distant point beyond him.
Jean-Pierre dropped to his knees and ripped open Suzanne’s bloodstained woolen jacket. Her soaked chest neither rose nor fell. He swore under his breath and brushed a lock of
black hair from her face.
Jean-Pierre cocked his head. Incessant gunfire filled the air. His colleagues were apparently keeping the German soldiers and local Polizei at bay, at least for the time being. He knew only a few valuable seconds remained to escape with
the prisoner.
He planted a soft kiss on Suzanne’s forehead. “Until we see each other in heaven,” he whispered.
Jean-Pierre darted to a trash can, where the shaken prisoner had hunkered down, covering his head. The resistance fighter clutched the man’s left arm and hustled him inside the watch store, pushing past two startled women. The rear door was propped open, and a black Opel four-door idled in the alley.
With a few quick steps, they were inside the vehicle.
Before the rear door was shut, the driver jerked the car into gear, and the Opel roared down the tight alley. The door slammed shut, and Jean-Pierre glanced back. No one followed.
The car merged onto a busier street, and only then did Jean-Pierre sink in his seat and close his eyes.
Soon they’d arrive at a safe house pitched on the Rhine River. And later, with the dark night sky as their protection, a skiff would sneak them into the warm arms of Mother
Switzerland—a skiff piloted by the mentor who’d recruited him. His nom de guerre: Pascal.
Jean-Pierre’s mission would soon be complete, but at what cost? Another agent—a good woman and a friend—had been sacrificed.
He had followed orders for the greater good, to save the life of a nameless prisoner. He only hoped this mission was worth it.
Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey, The Swiss Courier: A Novel,
***NOTE: I did not receive a copy of this book to review, so this is just the tour/first chapter.***
My dream, ever since I was a little girl, was to be a super hero. Specifically, I wanted to be one of the Wonder Twins, meeting with Superman and Wonder Woman at the Hall of Justice on Saturday mornings to fight evil and save the world. Lacking a twin, I got a law degree instead, thinking it would give me evil-fighting super hero powers. As it turns out, I was wrong.
