By Kathleen D. Bailey

This has been the hardest year of my life. In February we learned that our younger daughter, 43, had inoperable liver cancer. I moved into her apartment and nursed her for her final four months. It was a time of great pain, but also great joy as I learned more about her and God’s grace. She modeled that grace for me until her death on June 14.

I read my way through the ordeal, loading up with books on her library card, sinking into a story whenever she dozed in the daytime. Books were my medium of choice, not television with its canned laughter and paint-by-number storylines. I found new books, and also comfort from older ones.

An out-of-shape stockbroker, a soccer mom wife, three spoiled children. Not the most exciting mix for fiction, until you factor in a world on the brink. And that changes everything.

Most people know Terri Blackstock for her suspense novels. While she’s a master of the genre, those aren’t the books that have stuck with me. I keep coming back to her “Restoration” series, the first book of which was published in 2005.

Blackstock’s imagination brings us Doug Branning and his family, living a comfortable existence in a Birmingham, Alabama suburb. That all changes on a summer day when all electronics go dark, all over the world, caused by an EMP or electromagnetic pulse. I don’t understand all the science though Blackstock cheerfully explains it, but the result is clear. Planet Earth is plunged into a Stone Age existence. The Brannings grow vegetables, haul water, and deal with the loss of every modern convenience. Kay actually feeds her children spoonfuls of cooking oil, to slow their weight loss. The Brannings and their neighbors are tried in the fire.

The worst part, for me, is when young teen Beth Brannock dies. It’s the breaking point for her mother Kay, who has already been through so much. Kay embarks on a harrowing questioning of God. But she comes out on the other side, with the knowledge that this life is a rehearsal for the next one.

I called on Kay’s ordeal when we lost our daughter. I couldn’t understand it, any more than Kay did, and I struggled. But like Kay, I learned that what happens this side of the veil is temporary. The fictional Kay will see her daughter again, and we will see ours.

“Restoration” isn’t just a suspense story, though there’s plenty of that as the Brannocks and their friends cope with a murderer among them. It isn’t simply a romance, though readers will cheer for Deni when she chooses Mark Green over Craig. It isn’t only sci-fi, though Blackstock knows her “sci” and infuses it neatly with the “fi.” It’s the Book of Job for modern people.

Check out what Kathleen D. Bailey enjoys reading in this weeks My Reading Life! Share on X

Louise Fitzhugh’s “Harriet the Spy” debuted in 1964. I was already a teenager, but I read the book and scooped up copies for younger cousins.  My friends and I were coming off that 50s-60s trajectory of “be a nice little girl, don’t ask questions, cross your legs at the ankles.” Harriet was, well, different.

She wanted to be a spy, and roamed her Upper East side neighborhood with a pencil and notebook. When someone objected, she would cheerfully retort, “I have a profession.” She asked questions. Lots of them. She stood her ground. And she had an afternoon snack of cake and milk, supplied by the family cook, without worrying about body image. What can you expect from a girl who gets to play an onion in the school pageant?

Harriet does make some dubious moral choices. This is not a “Christian” book. But I still champion it for the light it shed for little girls in the early 60s. Yes, you can be a spy. Or whatever.

 

I continue to be inspired by books about the Second World War, which is why I don’t write them. It started with Brock and Bodie Thoene and their “Zion” Covenant and Chronicles, and it slides into brilliant work by Sarah Sundin, Lynn Austin and others. It’s as though, having a generation between our time and that time, we’ve had time to really reflect on and process the nature of God, the nature of evil, and the Biblical response. A new group of authors are looking at that time through the prism of Christianity, and finding lessons for a new generation. What’s not to love? I’m especially affected by Great Britain’s response to the Nazis. On paper, victory looked impossible. But with their spirit, victory was inevitable.

The World War II books continue to bring me hope. I’m awed and humbled by the way our parents, and now our grandparents, faced evil until it backed down. They risked all they had. As with Kay Branning, as with me, they learned that this world isn’t all there is.

What genre, series or stand-alone book inspires you?

 

Meet Kathleen D. Bailey…

Kathleen D. Bailey is a journalist and novelist with many years experience in the nonfiction world. She writes both historical and contemporary stories that focus on our journey home.

Learn more about Kathleen via her BRRC profile page here

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