My latest book is called
Threads of Hope. It’s about a young
Norwegian woman who comes to America to begin a new life. Everything she’s
loved dearly has died in in Norway and so it’s with a broken heart, yet one
woven together with delicate threads of hope, that she boards the ship, sailing
for this brave, new land called America.
I got the idea for this story from listening to my
grandfather, great-aunts, their cousin, and my mother, my aunts, uncles, along
with a host of others, talk about the old days. I must confess that a lot of
the talk happened at the lutefisk suppers
at the quaint church in northern Wisconsin where everyone gathered to pray,
eat, laugh, and reminisce, spinning tales of yon -- and sometimes yarn too. Although I’m not
a fan of lutefisk, I listened. So it was very important to me that my
mother, who is suffering in the end stages of metastatic breast cancer, read my
book. She’s read every single novel that I’ve written and no matter what the
time of day (or night) is, she calls me when she finishes the book.
She called me last night, sounding tired and a bit out of it
because of the morphine she’s taking to reduce the pain. “It was perfect,” she
said of the story. “Just perfect.”
“That’s it?” Usually she goes into character specifics and
remarks on the romance aspect. But not this time.
Then my mother explained that it had taken every ounce of
strength she possessed to hold the book so she could read it. Reading, a pastime
she has always loved, proved extremely difficult due to the cancer that is eating through her bones. Nonetheless, she couldn't
stop reading and read the story from cover-to-cover.
That made my day -- and I apologized for being so insensitive. But Mom doesn't like to discuss her pain with me that much. She'd rather I remember her as the strong, independent, woman she's always been during my growing-up years. The past 20 years, however, were filled with tragic disappointments and self-defeats for my mom. And here I’d been so worried she wouldn't
live long enough to read brand new book, which I think is my best historical novel
thus far! Selfish of me, perhaps, but it seemed so important.
So I’m praising the Lord that He allowed it to happen -- for me and for Mom. She always says my books encourage her and, yes, give her hope.
And so it is that by threads of hope, she hangs
on. She still attempts to appraise artwork, although now she doesn’t have the
strength to even sit long enough to work on her laptop computer. She no longer wants to eat. The
tumors in her abdomen are growing so much so that her stomach is distended. And
yet, she presses on. The woman has a will of iron and it’s always impressed me.
But it’s her steel-strong will that works against her too. She’s created her own
faith, one that she says doesn't include believing Jesus Christ is God and the
Savior of the world. Instead, she believes her own “truth.”
And yet, those threads of hope spun together with a daughter's love still bind me to her. While
there is life, there is hope. My prayer that I’ll see my mother in heaven one
day.
