Higher Honor by S.M. Kirkland

When Cadet Cassidy Sanders is brutally assaulted, she struggles to carry on as she turns further from the God of her youth. Her attacker is an acquaintance who has his own struggles to face. God uses their mutual friends to show both cadets the depth
of his grace and mercy.

Higher Honor is set within the sub-culture of America’s military colleges. The novel focuses on the elements of honor, brotherhood, duty, and the spirit of the characters to face and overcome challenges that grow them into the military’s
next generation of strong, capable leaders. The realism of Higher Honor’s setting and plot is a result of experience, observation, and much research.



Review:

Higher Honor is the story about a rape and how it affects not only the victim, but the perpetrator and their friends. Kirkland handles the situation--including the actual rape itself--with realism yet delicacy, so that you get the horror of the situation without the morbidity. Even more, she successfully portrays the emotional and psychological trauma Cassidy goes through--and does a convincing job of making Chris, the rapist, a believable and very human character instead of a cardboard human.

One of the themes is learning to depend on God, and finding strength in God's love. I think Cassidy explained it best when she told a support group that she had to remember that God defines who she is--not those few horrible minutes in the shower. For that line alone, this book will remain with me forever.
There is also an important theme of forgiveness, though I was not so pleased at her willingness to defend her rapist when he went to turn himself in. I was glad leveler heads prevailed.

I thought a few parts of it--like her recovery after she rediscovered Christ in her life--a little too easy, but not unbelievably so. Overall, a very good book, and I think many that Christians, especially any who have been in Cassidy's situation, will identify with her.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

S.M. Kirkland brings firsthand experience to her fiction.
While a student at North Georgia College and State
University (the senior military college of Georgia) she
enlisted in the Georgia Army National Guard. During a 10-
year military career, she served as a photo- and broadcast
journalist while serving in Italy and for the 1996 Summer
Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Kirkland currently works for the Calhoun Times as the
government reporter and her feature stories have appeared
in newspapers nationwide. Her first fiction publication was
a short story “Fair Balance” included in the anthology Light
at the Edge of Darkness (TWCP, 2007). This story received
several rave reviews.

Havah: The Story of Eve by Tosca Lee

Lee’s superior storytelling will have readers weeping for all that Havah forfeited by a single damning choice.
--Publishers Weekly starred review

“Havah is brilliant and breathtaking, inspired and inspiring.”
--author Sharon K, Souza, author of Lying on Sunday

“The most creative, mind-twisting novel of the summer.”
--Infuzemag.com, on Demon: A Memoir

Learn more:
www.havahstoryofeve.com

Learn more about Tosca at: www.toscalee.com

Savvy by Ingrid Law

Savvy tells the story of Mibs Beaumont, who is about to become a teenager. If that prospect weren't scary enough, in the Beaumont family the day you turn 13 is the day when you get a special power – your savvy. For example, Mibs has older brothers who can cause hurricanes and another who creates electricity.

But before her big day, Mibs’s dad is in a terrible accident. Will Mibs's new savvy be able to save her dad? Mibs undertakes an extraordinary adventure across America in order to save her dad – and, in the process, she learns a lot about herself and how best to use her special new power.

About Ingrid Law, in her own words:

"Perhaps it was the Lake Champlain monster that started it all. Born in Northern New York in 1970, my first home was a stone's throw from the waters of Lake Champlain and its legendary prehistoric sea monster. From the very start, life was steeped in the lure of the fantastic, of tall tales and big ideas.

When I turned six, my family moved to Colorado, where my father taught in a one-room school house in the tiny mountain town of Gold Hill. In Gold Hill, and places like it, I discovered that small things and small places can be just as interesting and extraordinary as big noisy ones, and even now, I'm drawn to tiny towns and quiet places possessing their own charm and quirky character.

Today, I still live in Colorado, close to family, friends, and the mountains, all of which help keep me from getting lost. I am the mother of an intense and imaginative 13-year-old daughter, and she and I hide away in a lovely old mobile home, with rickety floors, that we like to believe is a cross between a spaceship and a shoe box. We enjoy writing on the walls, painting on the ceiling, and creating all kinds of stories."

Writing Faith-Filled Fiction

One of my pet peeves in reading is characters who lose all common sense when the author needs to further a plot. You know: the brilliant scientist who forgets some basic law of physics; the brilliant military tactician who makes an error even a cadet wouldn't do; the street-tough black belt who doesn't get a punch in when jumped by an unarmed bad guy. These things can work when there's a true motivating reason: the scientist is in an unfamiliar environment and completely panicked; the commander is making an unorthodox move in order to impress his general; the black-belt is drunk.

However, I've sometimes seen religion badly used as an excuse to make characters do illogical and uncharacteristic things. The scientist throws out empirical evidence because his findings contradict his personal (or the author's personal) interpretation of a particular Bible verse; the military man stops fighting or doing a standard duty because it's prayer time and he hasn't received official permission from his superior to miss it; the black belt chooses to be beaten because he might hurt the person if he fought back and "God wants us to love our neighbor." Or, worse yet, the character does something stupid for no other reason than to let the author put him or her into a position where they can preach later.

Another pet peeve of mine is when someone writes about a religion they don't know and makes assumptions they never check out. Thus, you sometimes see Catholic scientists who say evolution is wrong because it's against "the Church's" beliefs. (The Church's official teachings say nothing of the sort.) Or you get Muslim soldiers who simply stop fighting at prayer times.

Sometimes, this is simple ignorance, but sometimes, the writer actually researches a religion he does not know and makes an erroneous conclusion based on misinformation. This is easier than ever because of the Internet.

In order to help writers who want to incorporate religion into their stories, I've started a quarterly newsletter, Faith-Filled Fiction. It's an educational e-zine rather than an entertainment, and contains articles about how to add religion in ways that enhance the story and add depth to the characters rather than use them as mouthpieces for a sermon-as-story or give them a handy excuse to do something stupid and otherwise uncharacteristic. It also has articles written about religions by someone who is a faithful follower of that religion, so you get first-hand information from a believer. These articles usually contain links the writer trusts as accurate for further research. Finally, Faith-Filled Fiction has a guest column where the writer talks about how religion has affected his or her writing.

Faith-Filled Fiction covers all the world religions, and even made-up ones. The goal is to educate rather than evangelize. If you're interested in subscribing, just sign up on the website at www.fabianspace.com. To view an issue, go to http://faithfilledfiction.karinafabian.com.