Winner
- Best in Fiction Indiana Faith and Writing Contest 2014
Ginny Red Fawn McLain is determined to hold
fast to her adoptive Shawnee culture despite her sudden reentry into her white
birth family. She rejects their Christianity, fearing the tenets of the white
man’s religion will prevent her from practicing as a Shawnee medicine woman.
But her heart refuses to shun her uncle’s young friend and apprentice minister,
Jeremiah Dunbar.
Jeremiah Dunbar has never doubted what he
would do with his life—he’d follow in his father’s footsteps as a minister of
the Gospel. But a mission trip west to the Native American tribes makes him
begin to question his future plans. At the discovery of his fellow missionary’s
long lost niece living among the Shawnee, Jeremiah is immediately smitten. But
unless Ginny Red Fawn McLain joins Christ’s fold—something she adamantly
resists—Jeremiah will have to choose between the woman he loves and the work
God has called him to do.
Ginny and Jeremiah struggle to discern the will of God, the Great Spirit,
for their lives, and if fitting their love into His plans is even possible.
Dreams and cultures clash amid an atmosphere of contempt and distrust, threatening
to make their love the last casualty of the Pigeon Roost Massacre.
Excerpt:
A soft, moist
touch against his lips jerked Jeremiah awake. At the sight of the white Indian
girl kneeling over him, myriad emotions darted around his chest like a bevy of
barn swallows. Surely she had not…
Red Fawn dipped
her finger into a little wooden bowl then touched it to his lips, moistening
them with an oily salve. “I am sorry to wake you, but the sun is rising in the
sky, and your friend asked me to bring you medicines.”
Jeremiah pushed
up to a sitting position on his woolen-blanket cot. Heat suffused his neck and
face at his initial mistaken impression of her actions. He poked out the tip of
his tongue to taste the oil she’d spread over his cracked lips. The sweet,
light taste told him it must be either plant or mineral based.
“It is sweet
birch oil,” she said, answering his silent question. “It will heal your lips
and make the skin soft again.” Her smile transformed her features from comely
to breathtakingly beautiful.
“You speak
English well.” He found it surprising that she hadn’t lost the language of her
childhood during her years with the Shawnee.
She set the bowl
aside. “My father wanted me to keep the white man’s language and to teach it to
him and my mother. He said it would be good for our family and our tribe when
dealing with the whites, so we spoke it often in our home.”
“Where is Zeb?”
Jeremiah cleared his burning throat and glanced around the longhouse. He needed
to direct his thoughts away from this girl who made his heart hammer like a
woodpecker’s beak on a dead log.
“He has gone to Chief Great Hawk’s lodge to
tell him what is written in the book you brought,” she said, her voice turning
harder. She walked to the fire, bent over a steaming iron pot, and stirred its
contents with a shaved stick.
She spoke as if
the Bible was new to her, but Zeb said the Shawnee had taken her at the age of
six. Jeremiah recalled his own sixth year vividly. That year, his family had
traveled from Kentucky to Indiana, and his mother gave birth to his brother
Joel in the Conestoga along the way. He and his seven-year-old sister, Dorcas,
had kept three-year-old Lydia occupied by fishing for crawdads on a creek bank
during Mother’s travails. It seemed inconceivable that this girl, who
remembered her given name as Ginny McLain, had no memory of her parents or Zeb
and his wife, Ruth, setting her on their laps and telling her stories from the
Scriptures.
“Surely, you
remember the Bible. I remember the Bible stories my ma and pa told me and my
sisters when I was six.”
She stopped
stirring the sweet-smelling contents of the pot and became still. At her
silence, hope leapt in Jeremiah that perhaps he’d jogged a long-buried memory
in her.
Without
answering him, she grasped the pot handle with a scrap of wool material to
protect her hand, lifted the pot from the fire, and set it on a flat rock. She
dipped an earthen bowl into the pot and then carried the vessel to him. She set
the bowl on the ground in front of him. “When it is cool enough, drink it. It
will heal your sore throat.”
As she walked
out of the longhouse, an ache not associated with his illness throbbed in
Jeremiah’s chest. Regret filled him. God had given him an opportunity to share
Christ with Red Fawn, and he had squandered it.
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Author Interview:
What was the best money you ever spent for
your writing career?
Answer: The money I
spent attending the American Christian Fiction Writers annual conferences,
especially in the early years of launching my writing career. I doubt I’d be
published today if I hadn’t attended those conferences and had the opportunity
to meet editors and multi-published Christian authors. Their help and
instruction proved key to my eventual publication.
Were you an avid reader as a child? What
did you read?
Answer: Yes. My mother
taught me to read before I attended school and I fell in love with reading from
the start. I had a book of fairy tales and I read a story each night at
bedtime. I spent most of my allowance money for chores on books. Some of my
favorites were The Bobbsey Twins
series, The Five Little Peppers and How
They Grew, and Laddie by Indiana
author, Gene Stratton Porter.
How does your faith affect your writing?
Answer: I consider my
writing a ministry, so my faith is an integral component of my writing. Through
my characters I strive to portray the human condition with all its challenges,
heartaches and joys and show how, if we invite God to work in our lives, He
will reveal His will for our lives and, as stated in John 10:10, we might “have
life and have it to the full.”
What was an early experience where you
learned that language had power?
Answer: I remember my
dad reading to me from The Complete
Poetical Works of James Whitcomb Riley, the acclaimed “Hoosier Poet.” Both
my parents wrote poetry and I, too, inherited that gift. Listening to Riley’s
descriptive poetry sparked a love for how words can paint a picture in the
mind. I simply fell in love with words.
What did you edit out of this book and why?
Answer: I originally
wrote a prologue showing Ginny as a child at her cabin at Pigeon Roost on the
day of the attack. To make the story more active from the jump, I decided to
edit that out and work that information further into the book. I love the
prologue though, and did keep it on my computer.
Comments
Good luck and God's blessings
PamT