The CFBA Tour presents Dineen Miller's first novel The Soul Saver published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., and a fiction partner to Dineen's co-authored (with Lynn Donovan) non-fiction book Winning Him Without Words: 10 Keys to Thriving in Your Spiritually Mismatched Marriage. Dineen Miller is just about the sweetest, most committed Christian I've never had the pleasure of meeting in person. Well-versed in spiritual warfare with up close and personal experience in the topic lines of both of these books, Dineen has written a story for women whose husbands are unbelievers.
Lexie (Alexis) Baltimore, inspired clay sculptor, is wife to Hugh, a physicist assistant professor at Stanford working toward a tenured position, and mother to 8 year old Jeremy. When Hugh and Lexie lost their little girl, the excruciating pain and sorrow turned Lexie to God and Hugh away from Him. When Lexie submitted her grief to the Lord, He began to use her sculpting skills to form faces of people He'd set up for Lexi to help. Being awakened in the middle of the night after descriptive dreams, she goes to the studio in her home to allow the Lord to fill out the formless heads of clay. Following the finished product, He directs her to the individual and shows her how she's to help. She can share none of this with her faithless husband who thinks the faces represent "practice".
One incident produces the attractive face of a man. When Lexie finds him, she learns he's a widowed pastor and father of a girl around Jeremy's age who survived the accident which took his wife's life but left little Samantha with a new heart. An immediate attraction forms between them which Lexie tries hard to ignore. Nate, the pastor, quietly pursues Lexie but not for the reason either of them fully understands. The tormented Nate fights against his unbelief and deception, believing he must carry out his mission with Lexie in order to save his daughter's life.
Meanwhile, Hugh experiences his own brands of deception and betrayal, realizing too slowly how he's jeopardizing everything of genuine importance in his life because he's too stubborn to consider a spiritual reality after his pushed down grief.
This novel is in no way a rant against either partner in a marriage, demonstrating the weaknesses of individuals on both sides of faith. Because Dineen is a Christian, of course her worldview comes from the desire for the Truth to be recognized and lived by her character's husband, but she aptly includes the multiple ways all of us can be deceived and manipulated by the enemy of our souls when we either don't acknowledge his skills and intents or when we fail to come against his schemes in the power of the Holy Spirit.
A comforting and hopeful novel, this will inspire wives with unbelieving husbands to keep fighting for them in the power of the Most High while reminding them to trust God with all of their faith and emotions and to never give up praying for the one they love.
Efficiently written with several cliches most readers won't even notice and ended satisfactorily, as the dedication indicates, the novel was written "For all the 'Lexies' out there. Remember God is faithful."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1616265825
Father, you know Dineen's heart and her love and devotion to you above all, to her husband and family, and her willingness to obey at all costs. She's been through her share of trials and suffering, but you've supplied many blessings along the way. I pray your abundance to flood her spirit and her life situation. May she reap what she has sown in prayer for those she loves so much. Bless her, Lord. Please. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.