Chasm Between Father and Son at Center of Compelling Story of Love, Loss and Forgiveness
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Bill Smith’s father is an enigma. Could his praying and preaching the wholesomeness of Christianity be a cover for something unspeakably dark in his past? Each man’s lifelong struggle to retain his own integrity while learning to respect the other forms the foundation of The Home Stretch, a compelling exploration of a difficult father-son relationship and the complexity of bridging seemingly unbridgeable differences.
Award-winning author Wayne M. Johnston’s thoroughly absorbing, reality-based story is presented through the voice of everyman Bill Smith (loosely based on Johnston himself) who, throughout his life, is confronted with extraordinary circumstances. Raised in a religious cult, Bill’s unconventional upbringing and strained relationship with his father inform his life experiences and underwrite his formidable urge, from a young age, to simply escape this life altogether.
Bill struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, and embarks upon a career navigating the rough waters of the Pacific on a tugboat. His tales of weathering gale-force winds and violent storms at sea provide metaphorical undercurrents for Bill’s fraught relationship with his father, his failed early marriage, his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s and his own battle with leukemia, which he is told will kill him.
Just when Bill has come to believe he has put the worst of it to rest, he learns something more about his father that opens everything up again, except this time, Bill’s sister is the victim.
Ultimately, The Home Stretch is a powerful coming-of-age story for grownups that poignantly captures the unresolved emotions that surface when our past and present selves collide. Johnston gives readers candid glimpses into life-defining moments of reckoning that many of us will have to face head-on, such as retiring from a career that defines us, becoming a caregiver to a parent and contemplating our own mortality. The Home Stretch serves as a stark reminder that the peace we hope for as we age is often shoved aside to make room for another crisis, but it is also an inspiring tale woven with themes of forgiveness and survival.
Wayne M. Johnston taught English, Creative Writing and Publications at La Conner High School for 19 years. Prior to that, he worked on tugboats for 22 years, usually as chief engineer, towing freight barges between Canadian and West Coast American ports. In 2011, he won the Soundings Review First Publication Award for his essay, “Sailing,” and has published other essays locally. For his debut novel, North Fork, he drew from years of experience reading student journals to reproduce the way kids voice serious matters to a trusted adult. North Fork was released in 2016 as a YA novel. The story is told through the voices of three 17-year-olds as journal entries for their English class. Bill Smith, the protagonist in The Home Stretch, is their English teacher, and The Home Stretch (book two in a planned trilogy) is his back story.
Johnston lives with his wife, Sally, on Fidalgo Island in Washington State where he is working on another book.
The Home Stretch Publisher: Black Heron Press ISBN-10: 1936364344 ISBN-13: 978-1936364343 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Target.com and anywhere books are sold
Trish Stevens Stephanie Williams Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Monica Foster
Senior Publicist
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
Direct: 713.446.8815
Phone: 281.333.3507
Fax: 832.569.5539 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
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Love Is Power: Receiving God’s Love Transforms Our Life So We May Inspire Others
Chattanooga, TN – Dr. Timothy Jennings was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. In addition to maintaining a private practice as a board-certified Christian psychiatrist and certified master psychopharmacologist for many years, he is a lecturer, international speaker, and author of many widely-respected books.
In his latest book, The God-Shaped Heart: How Correctly Understanding God’s Love Transforms Us, Dr. Jennings explores the healing power of love and exposes a single idea, misunderstood and deeply rooted within Christianity, that has prevented many believers in God from experiencing the freedom and healing power of His unfailing love.
Human beings are experts at complicating things. We become trapped in cycles of shame, violence and addiction that steal our joy and prevent us from loving others. In his book, Dr. Jennings identifies eternal truths that open the heart to God’s love and offers a way to free us from this prison. It’s really very simple; the key to health and happiness is love ― God’s love for us and our love for others.
The author offers insights that make God’s love understandable, accessible and applicable to all ― including anyone frustrated with Christianity or who see it as negative and critical. In this compelling follow-up to The God Shaped Brain, Jennings takes an evidence-based approach to what he calls the “infection of thought” that keeps many Christians trapped in fear and insecurity. He lists seven stages of spiritual development to help people get out of this trap by correctly understanding God’s love. By transforming how they experience the world will improve every aspect of their life and help them become an inspiration to others by being a beacon of love, light and encouragement.
A Life-Fellow of the Southern Psychiatric Association, Dr. Jennings obtained his M.D. degree from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Memphis and completed his psychiatric residency at D.D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia. Jennings is also the President and Founder of Come and Reason Ministries and has served as President of the Southern Psychiatric Association and Tennessee Psychiatric Association. He resides with his wife in Chattanooga, TN.
His other books include: Could It Be This Simple? A Biblical Model for Healing the Mind, The Journal of the Watcher, The Remedy New Testament Expanded Paraphrase and The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life.
For more information about Dr. Jennings and to hear his lectures, please visit the website: www.comeandreason.com.
Mary Beth Smith
Park Cities Publishing
214-725-2823 [email protected]
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Blood in the Desert: Only The Unwavering Power Of Love And Faith Can Overcome Persecution
Dallas, TX ― Religious persecution was an all-too cruel reality for early Christians in 294 A.D. The Roman Empire searched relentlessly for believers, torturing and killing some and selling others into slavery. It was a dark time for Miriam, an orphaned young woman now enslaved by a brutal Roman officer named Quintus. Miriam would endure unthinkable emotional and physical torture before being forced to bear the officer’s child, a heartache made worse when the baby, Philip, is born blind. In a fit of rage, the ruthless Quintus drives mother and child apart, casting them on perilous, separate paths.
C. Douglas Gordon’s debut novel, Blood in the Desert, follows Miriam and Philip as they each drift aimlessly toward their fate. In this portrait of the enduring supernatural power of love and faith in perilous times, the mysterious wolf Lupa appears, leading Miriam to her new destiny, while Philip is taken in by nomadic traders. Their dramatic journeys through the treacherous devotions of early Christendom illuminate the risks and rewards of faith in the years before Emperor Constantine found a powerful ally in Yesua and changed the course of history. Until then, all the things modern Christians take for granted — institutions, buildings, meeting spaces and even the gathered texts that make up the New Testament — were nonexistent for hundreds of years following the death and resurrection of Christ.
Dallas businessman C. Douglas Gordon has translated his organizational and management skills to the task of bringing detail-oriented research to his novels. Inspired by his older brother’s deep faith, Doug honors his memory by exploring the roots of Christianity from its earliest appearances in history and through its years of torment and challenge.
Doug’s series, You Left in Me the Faith, seeks to shed light on the formative period that gave birth to the Church as we know it today. Years of effort have produced an exciting first novel, Blood in the Desert. Doug creates fictional characters whose lives interact with and are impacted by real historical events and figures of the day. Readers can’t help but be amazed that Christianity survived at all. The second novel in the series, The Twelve Coins, is currently in progress.
