When I was in eighth grade, my mom gave me a book for Christmas that changed my life. At Home in Mitford, by Jan Karon. It’s unlikely that I was in Ms. Karon’s target audience, seeing as the protagonist of her bestselling Mitford series is a sixty-something Episcopalian clergyman with a penchant for sherry, meatloaf, and Coleridge.
But I devoured those books. I was absorbed from the first paragraph. I loved the characters and the dialogue, the diction, and the seamless integration of faith with fiction. It was the first time I’d seen contemporary characters struggling with matters of faith in a convincing way.
And yet, perhaps the most memorable moments from those novels are the insights into Cynthia Coppersmith’s creative process. Cynthia is a children’s author and illustrator, winsome and clever, who falls for Father Tim, the main character. Throughout the novels, we get glimpses of her struggles as an artist: writer’s block, self-doubting, the drudgery of working toward a deadline, and constantly questioning if she’s really any good at all.
At one point, she confides to Tim that she wishes she had someone to show her paintings in progress — “Oh that’s wonderful, they might say. Keep doing it. Or, Haven’t you made all the heads too big?” In another moment, she reveals her inspiration for her books: she imagines she is a child, and then she writes exactly what she wants to hear.
And that is precisely why I undertook the insane project of writing my own novel.
There is no shortage of life-changing stories on the bookshelves of your local library. Classics that will never be irrelevant. Fantasy that transports and inspires you. Science fiction that forces you to wonder. Literary fiction that engulfs and bewitches you. I didn’t want to write a novel because I had any delusions that it would be published, adapted into a film, or even read by more than ten people. Of course, all of that would be super cool.
But I wrote it because I wanted it to exist. I wanted to read this story. I wanted to read about someone who grew up in a Christian family like mine. But instead of rejecting the faith he was handed down, or embracing it…he simply ignores it. He buries it and tries to forget it until it bursts out of the ground and hunts him down.
I didn’t want to write an apologetic for Christianity. That has been done well by others. I didn’t want to write a critique of modern evangelicalism, though I’ll admit there are many things to criticize. That also has been done well. I wanted to write a story. And so I’ve done.
It’s far from perfect, and I’m sharing it anyway. Because it’s good not to take ourselves too seriously.
Katie Bertola 