Judas Iscariot. Has there ever been a name more reviled in Christendom? How could a guy who’d been with Jesus throughout his 3-year ministry, seen the miracles, listened to the parables and sermons, felt the wind stop that scary night on the Sea of Galilee–how could a guy with those experiences turn around and betray…
Motherless for many years, life for the four Gerhard sisters of Seabury, Massachusetts, changed abruptly when their father died in 1874. He’d been a professor of medieval history with a home provided for his family by his college. With their father gone, the four sisters are homeless and penniless. Together they come up with the…
Denah, daughter of Carmi, is betrothed to Japheth, the disgraced son of Noah. She grew up fascinated by Noah’s family, off there just outside of the city, building an ark to save people and animals because his God was going to punish the world with rising waters. As if that could happen. So Denah is…
Life is full of the unexpected, don’t you think? That seems to be the over-riding theme of this 4-in-1 collection from Barbour’s Romancing America series, where each of the characters find that life has taken one or more turns they had not seen coming. Each of these authors takes those turns and gives them an…
Ever forget something really important? All of us have–or suspect we have–but few of us can match Seth Kincaid. He forgot he was married. That’s what childhood trauma and the Civil War did to him. Now that he’s begun to remember, he’d like to keep his wife from killing him. If you’ve been reading the…
Mary of Magdala suffered a trauma in her youth that led to having seizures and hearing voices. Although the Jewish priests prayed over her, she was not healed. The incidents grew in frequency and intensity until people around her began to whisper “Mad Mary” when they saw her. Eventually she lost her grip on sanity…