"A Baby's Right to Choose" by David Winters

It’s small-town Ohio, about as typical as you can find in the Midwest. Madison Matthews works as a counselor at an abortion clinic. Her husband Zane is the wrestling coach at the local high school, and they’re raising their two children. Madison is increasingly under pressure from two sources. Her boss is pressuring her to advise clients to choose abortion. Her own conscience is telling her to resist.  

One of those clients is Ashley, a high school senior with a bright future ahead. She and her boyfriend Terrell have gotten too close, and now she’s pregnant. Both are church-attending Christians. Ashley is at first inclined to go through with the procedure, but Terrell is opposed, despite what it might cost him in terms of a much-anticipated future.

 

A seemingly separate story is that a killer is targeting young women. The murder seems unconnected, but Madison begins to see a possible link between the victims. She also learns she’s unexpectedly pregnant with her third child. She’s brought to a crisis point when she is asked by her boss to substitute as an assistant at an abortion procedure – and she learns her obstetrician is also the doctor performing abortions. 

 

David Winters

In A Baby’s Right to Choose, author David Winters swirls all these stories together into what becomes a tale of conscience and suspense. With a narrative that could easily slip into the expected, Winters avoids the didactic by presenting the real dilemmas women (and men) face in questions involving abortion, because Ashley’s and Terrell’s problems are real. So, too, are the financial aspects of abortion clinics; their services are not free. And it pointedly asks what a Christian family might do when it’s their daughter who gets pregnant.

 

Winters is also the author of Five Christmas Plays, Taking God to Work, The Accidental Missionary, Exercise Your Faith, Sabbatical of the Mind, Driver Confessional, and Stock Car Inferno. He’s an award-winning author, humorist, and speaker, and had written for a variety of Christian publications. He lives in suburban Washington, D.C. 

 

A Baby’s Right to Choose is not the easiest of stories to read; it contains a number of graphic scenes, including one of an abortion procedure. But it’s an important story, one that underscores that this is a complex issue for both obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. 

 

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5 Plays, a Story, and a Novella for Christmas.

5 Plays, a Story, and a Novella for Christmas

It’s that time of year for last-minute gift buying, wrapping presents, decorating trees, family celebrations, and reading stories about Christmas. Christmas isn’t only about an abundance of choices for gifts; it’s also the time of the year for an abundance of seasonal choices for reading. You can reach for old favorites like A Christmas Carol or any of the other Charles Dickens Christmas stories, or a shorter work like A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.

You can also look at genre books about Christmas – science fiction stories, horror, stories, murder mysteries (lots of murder mysteries), and even celebrate the season with your favorite zombie (yes, there are stories about zombies and Christmas).

To see how Christmas is being treated by contemporary writers, I did a kind of random selection and read a collection of plays, a novella, and a short story. I learned that if there if is one common characteristic in Christmas stories, it’s how wildly diverse they are. These selections are not meant to be representative; I don’t think it’s possible to find representative works of Christmas stories in all of their sub-genres.

Five Christmas Plays

Writer David Winters has written about faith and work (Taking God to Work; Sabbatical of the Mind) and a mystery (Driver Confessional). He’s also written Five Christmas Plays, short theatrical works designed specifically for churches to use as part of their Christmas observances. 

“The Singing Trees” is about having an obsession for the perfect Christmas – the right decorations, the right food, the right table settings, the right everything – and what happens when it all blows up. “I’ll Be Late for Christmas” is about a family waiting for the father to return from his Army deployment, and he is way past his expected arrival. “Christmas Prayer of Forgiveness” is about a family broken by abandonment and divorce, and what happens when the father returns, seeking forgiveness. In “The Christmas Cabin,” a father brings home an unexpected guest – his daughter from a long-ago relationship. And “Grandma Louise’s Christmas Miracle” is about long-ago stories and the seeming impossibility of a contemporary miracle. 

Winters uses sentiment, humor (the waitresses in “I’ll Be Late for Christmas” are the kind of sassy servers you want to meet in small-town diners), empathy, understanding, and basic principles of faith to tell his stories. Each of the five plays is a telling of the Christmas story in a different way.

Pieces on Earth

Author Cathy Bryant has written some 13 books of fiction (like the Miller’s Creek series) and non-fiction (Christian devotionals). Pieces on Earth is a novella that tells the story of Liv, a young Navy wife living in Pensacola with her husband Jeff and daughter Chesney. Jeff’s overseas tours of duty are supposed to be over, and Liv is looking forward to a Christmas with her parents and family in snowy Colorado. Jeff is suddenly ordered to Afghanistan (he’s a Navy pilot) and Liv’s plans are completely upset. Liv discovers she’s pregnant and is so angry with her husband that she chooses not to tell him before he leaves.

She’s a believing, practicing Christian, but she’s also angry with God for allowing her plans to be upset. She stops going to church and starts spending time with her more materialistic secular friends. One faith connection she keeps is telling Bible stories to four-year-old Chesney, helping the child understand the overall story of the Bible. She starts to worry when Jeff’s regular calls home stop; then a friend’s husband is reported killed in action and she learns her own husband is missing in action. 

Pieces on Earth is a poignant story of the waning and waxing of faith, how circumstances can seem overwhelming, and how God is always faithful.

Mystery of the Beautiful Old Friend

Michelle Ann Hollstein is the author of the Aggie Underhill mystery series, a fantasy trilogy, a paranormal mystery series, a novel, and several non-fiction books. In the short story “Mystery of the Beautiful Old Friend,” Aggie Underhill, a slightly past middle-aged woman living in Palm Springs, California, is sitting at lunch with her friends Betty Wilcox and Roger Dunlap when she sees her close, personal friend Tom Wood sitting at a nearby table, with a beautiful young woman. Aggie has no room for jealousy; she’s in love with Tom but not ready for marriage, so she’s told him that they should date other people. But one this beautiful?

To make herself feel better and to perhaps compete with the young beauty, Aggie dyes her hair. It’s supposed to be reddish highlights; it turns into fire-engine red, or, as her friend Roger says, “Woody Woodpecker red.” She and Betty go to the mall for Christmas shopping when they spot the beautiful young woman. In the middle of their spying, one of Santa’s elves is found murdered (bodies always seem to turn up when Aggie Underhill is around). 

“Mystery of the Beautiful Old Friend” focuses on the more commercial aspects of the Christmas season. It’s also a funny murder mystery; what goes through Aggie’s mind when she realizes what’s happened to her hair causes more than a few laughs.

Top photograph by Freestocks.org via Unsplash. Used with permission.