"More Than Friends" by Autumn Macarthur

Catriona Maclean is a nurse and the daughter of an Edinburgh pastor. She has a servant’s heart, and her role model is Martha, sister of Mary, of the Gospels. Catriona is almost obsessive in her desire to serve; she’s convinced herself that she will never marry, and it relates to a family situation from years before where, she believes, her selfishness cost her brother.

She’s organized a day at the beach for disabled children, and she has a problem. The man who had promised to help couldn’t go, and she needed a man for the boys, and specifically a man cleared to work with disabled children. The only man who fits the requirements is Alastair Murray, who works in the orthopedic unit at Catriona’s hospital. The problem with Alastair: he was the reason for her act of selfishness years ago; she had to go on a youth group trip because he would be there as well. He’s the best friend of one of her brothers, and Catriona knows she is still in love with him.

Alastair also catches the eyes of the other nurses and woman workers at the hospital. Catriona, who studiously avoids makeup and really caring about her appearance, is convinced he doesn’t think twice about her.

Autumn Macarthur

Except he does. Alastair has always been in love with Catriona, but he senses her desire for distance and non-involvement. He goes out of his way to protect himself as well. He agrees to be her last-minute substitute on the field trip. Complications ensue.

More Than Friends by Autumn Macarthur is the story of Catriona and Alastair, and if and how they will finally realize their mutual love. Told in alternating viewpoints, most of the short novel occurs in one day, the day of the field trip. It’s a lovely little story that focuses the reader on how these two people will come to recognize their feelings for each other.

Macarthur has written numerous books in the Christian inspirational romance genre and inspirational non-fiction. More Than Friends is book 2 in the Macleans Series. She lives in London.

The novel is a quick, easy-to-read romance that sounds all too real when two people go out of their way to ignore, excuse, and explain away their feelings.

Three Romances: "Snowed Inn," "Love’s Return," "and Winter’s Secret"

I did a binge of Christian romances. I discovered they generally have three things in common. 

First, there’s a conflict between the main characters, who should be falling in love or already in love but complications prevent that. Second, there’s a faith element, with either the main characters or another significant character searching for faith. And third, there’s the threat of crime or physical violence threatening one or both of the main characters.

Snowed Inn is a novella by Kate Palmer, part of Palmer’s Western Hearts series. Jayne is a rather tall (six-feet) beauty living on her family’s ranch. She’s completely focused on helping the community’s teens raise money for a swimming pool, but she’s just learned that instead of the $1,200 they have to raise, the amount is more like $12,000. So now they’re looking at adding additional ride on the ranch’s annual sleigh rides. But who can drive the additional team?

In walks Forrest, the new farrier (person who shoes horses) in town. Forrest turns out to be the guy Jayne thinks walked out on her years before, to take a job with the Peace Corps. Forrest thinks Jayne is the one who gave him the boot. Conflict ensues, complicated by vandalism at the ranch that seems aimed stopping the sleigh rides and then a robbery.

Palmer is the author of several Christian romances and non-fiction writing for children.

Love’s Return by T.K. Chapin is the story of Jessica and Kirk. They knew each other in high school, and they traveled together across the country to Washington to take jobs in Spokane. Jessica ends up as a magazine writer and loses touch with Kirk. Years pass, and she meets him in a coffee shop. Kirk looks like a man aged beyond his years. He now works for a security service. He lost his baby to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and his marriage crumbled. 

Jessica is being seriously stalked, and it’s Kirk’s security firm providing protection. The stalking suspects include any number of people. Jessica begins to find Kirk, Kirk begins to find Jessica and faith, and the stalker is targeting them both. The story is action-packed.

Chapin is the author of some 25 Christian romances. He lives in Idaho.

In Winter’s Secret by Lyn Cote, Wendy Carey is a visiting nurse and Rodd Durand is the new sheriff in a mostly rural county in Wisconsin. Someone is breaking into the homes of elderly residents while they’re away. Durand recognizes a pattern – the burglaries are happening when elderly people are taken to the hospital, usually authorized by Wendy. 

Durand lays traps but the culprit is wily and evasive. Murmurings begin against the new sheriff, everyone from the local newspaper editor (drawn nicely as a real jerk) and the town busybody, a woman so filled with venom that she sprays everyone in sight. Wendy and Rodd begin to fall for each other, but will the inability to capture the burglar undo Rodd’s career and force him to leave?

Cote has written some 45 books, including 35 Christian romance novels. She lives in Wisconsin. 

These romances are not written to be great literature lasting for centuries. They’re simply stories, designed to entertain and inform, and most of all to inspire. It’s light reading, but you’ll find yourself getting wrapped up in the lives and trials of these fictional characters.

Top photograph by Kristina Litvjak via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“A Garden in Paris” and “A Hilltop in Tuscany” by Stephanie Whitson

Have you ever read a novel that you found sound engaging that you immediately bought and read the sequel?

That’s what I did with Stephanie Grace Whitson’s A Garden in Paris and A Hilltop in Tuscany. They’re romance novels, but in the same sense that the Shetland and Scottish novels of Michael Phillips are romance novels. At one point, I even suspected that Phillips had written these two books under a pseudonym – these two romances by Whitson have a similar sense of place and a sweeping story that the novels of Phillips has.

A Garden in Paris tells the story of Mary McKibbin Davis and her adult daughter Elizabeth. They live in Omaha, and Mary is recently widowed. Her husband Sam had been something of a control freak – sweeping her away from where they met in France, organizing her life (and his own), discouraging her playing of the violin. He operated a property development firm, which is now being run by Elizabeth, who appears to be just as hard-charging and controlling as her father. Elizabeth, who feels no closeness to her mother, is engaged to Jeff Scott, an attorney who genuinely likes his prospective mother-in-law and has growing concerns about his driven fiancée. 

Mary sets into motion a series of events that will lead to a general unraveling of the family. For starters, she challenges her daughter over a contract at the family foundation. More significantly, she writes to her first love, Jean-Marc David, at the last address she knew for him, and asks him to meet her in Paris on Christmas Eve. She hasn’t seen or talked with him in almost 30 years. The story becomes something of a family saga, as Mary begins to rediscover love and Elizabeth learns there is far more to her mother than she ever knew, or that her father ever allowed her to know.

In the sequel, A Hilltop in Italy, Mary’s love life is growing more complex, with both Jean-Marc David and his close friend Luca Santo falling in love with her. Elizabeth is planning her wedding and her future life in the same hard-charging way she’s run the business founded by her father, and she’s running right over her fiancée. Elizabeth is also having to deal with collapsing illusions about her late father, her mother’s romances, and the real possibility of her own relationship to Jeff collapsing. 

Stephanie Grace Whitson

Much of the story is set in Florence and Tuscany, the home of Luca Santo and his large, extended family. And the reader wonders how Mary’s and Elizabeth’s love lives are going to resolve itself without major wreckage for everyone involved.

Whitson has published 29 Christian fiction books, most in the Christian romance genre, as well as two non-fiction books. She’s also a speaker and seminar leader, teaching groups on writing, Christian faith, and women’s history. She holds a master’s degree in history.

A Garden in Paris and A Hilltop in Tuscany fall into that proverbial “difficult to put down” category of novels.  

Top photograph of the Montmartre District in Paris by Guiseppe Mondi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Return to Paradise” by Tim Speer

David Martin, a young man in finance working his way up, is driving from Dallas to St. Louis for a homecoming weekend at his alma mater. From there, he’ll spend a few days with his parents in his hometown of Farmington, about an hour south of St. Louis. But as he enters Missouri on the interstate, he has to take a secondary road, and along that road he meets, or almost meets, a cow. He does swerve off the road and discovers he has four flat tires.

A local man driving by gives David a lift into the small town of Spring River. He gets his car towed but getting four replacement tires for his Mercedes is going to be difficult if not impossible over the weekend. David’s going to miss his homecoming. What he finds in Spring River is a town whose surrounding farms are going to be sold by an unscrupulous banker, a priest in the local Catholic church, and a young woman named Sarah Nichols. 

David quickly sizes up what is happening with the banker, does a bit of research, and then has to let the townspeople believe he’s trying to get control of the farms himself. Everything is going to go extremely well or it’s going to go extremely badly.

Tim Speer

Published in 2015, Return to Paradise by Tim Speer isn’t a typical kind of Christian novel. David is Catholic, one who’s serious about his faith. He’ll have discussions with both the priest and Sarah Nichols about his faith and what he believes; Sarah is herself a Baptist. Second, the imagery is subtle, but this is a story about redemption – the farmers get caught in a financial vise partly of their own making and partly because of the banker; there’s no way out except by the young man who comes to town. Third, there’s not a lot of deep romance that can happen in a long weekend, but there’s enough to suggest that one’s going to happen.

Speer is also the author of Seventy Times Seven, a novel published in 2016. He lives in Midland, Texas.

Return to Paradiseis a charming story, simple, straightforward, and enjoyable. It’s the story of a young man who decides that if he’s serious about his faith, he has to live it.

Top photograph by Bunny & Norm Lenburgvia Flickr.

We move into a place

We move into a place

we do not know

to learn what it is

and who lives here

who thinks, talks, believes

in unfamiliar ways

in unknown ways

often misunderstood

we abide

we abide in the heart

  the only heart that knows

  the only heart who knows

what is is

what it is to be

not one of us

but one of us

a stranger and alien

so consumed by love

the he accepts

nails

gall

piercing

death

I look at my hands

  and consider nails

I feel my thirst

  and consider gall

I touch my side

  and consider piercing

I see my life

  and consider death

and so I abide

I abide

Image by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

Saturday Good Reads: Mary Harwell Sayler

I connected with poet and writer Mary Harwell Sayler online like most onlne connections happen – someone’s blog post comments, or someone’s Facebook page, or someone retweets someone. In Mary’s case, I think it was via Facebook. But I had been following one her blogs, Poetry Editor and poetry, for some time before that.

She lives in Florida and attended Florida State University. When she says “Christian poet” she means exactly that – poets of all Christian faiths – Catholic, evangelical, Protestant, and Orthodox. All are welcome and all are honored.

Mary is deeply involved with poetry – writing it, encouraging it, promoting it, encouraging poets, and writing about it. One her activities is administering the Christian Poets and Writers page on Facebook, and maintaining a corresponding blog called Christian Poets and Writers.

We had a conversation the other day about Joseph and Judah from the Book of Genesis, and she mentioned that she written poems about the Joseph story. I asked her for links, and she provided them: After Selling Joseph into Slavery and Choosing Judah.

Check out her various blogs, her poetry and the Facebook page for Christian Poets and Writers.