Dear Readers, I am
privileged to be able to introduce you to Beth Moore’s first novel. I haven’t
met her, but I feel like I know her. I have been in the studio audience for the
taping of her and her husband on James and Betty Robison’s show. And I’ve been
involved in her Bible studies with the ladies’ life group I’m a part of in our
church.
Bio: Beth Moore
has written many best–selling books and is a dynamic teacher and a prolific
Bible–study author whose public speaking engagements take her across the United States
to challenge tens of thousands. Beth is focused on teaching women all over the
world and is known and respected wherever she goes. She is a dedicated wife and
mother of two adult daughters and lives in Houston , Texas ,
where she leads Living Proof Ministries and teaches an adult Sunday school
class. Beth is one of the best known women in the evangelical Christian market.
Her first book with Tyndale House, So Long, Insecurity, was a NYT bestseller.
Welcome Beth. You are well known to millions around the globe as a Bible study teacher, speaker, and the author of nonfiction books including So Long, Insecurity. What made you decide to write your first work of fiction?
I was ambushed by the love of story from both sides of my
bloodline. My mother all but ate books, and from the time I was six years old,
my father managed movie theaters. My fate was sealed. I still love both forms
of entertainment, but to this day, what I love best about a movie is not
landscape or costume. It’s dialogue. It all boils down to words with me. Before
I could write my ABCs, I’d cat-scratch pretend cursive all over Big Chief
tablets from the Piggly Wiggly, playing like I was writing a book. Through the
years of writing Bible study curriculum and nonfiction trade books, I’ve been
drawn like a magnet to the stories of the men and women in Scripture that
seemed particularly complex. David and Absalom, for instance. Miriam and Moses.
I love narrative. I love imagining what these lives of faith were like away
from the page and how these men and women in the sacred pages interacted with
those in their sphere of influence. Sometimes those imaginations would turn
into creative writings.
Way down deep in my heart I wondered if I’d ever try a
novel. Bible study curriculum is my first love and keeps me busier than I can
even manage, so I couldn’t imagine how the time would present itself. Still,
that seed was down in that soil, where I figured it would always stay. One day
in discussions about So Long, Insecurity, Karen Watson glanced across the table
and asked out of the blue, “Hey, Beth, have you ever thought about trying your
hand at fiction?” I felt the heat go to my face like someone knew something on me she wasn’t supposed to know. And I don’t
know how else to explain it—it was like she tipped a cup of water right over
that soil and that sleepy seed started waking up. I went through something
really hard not long after that. Something I wasn’t free to talk about. There
at home, trapped in my imagination, a storyline began to sprout, green and
gawky but with enough semblance of form, I kept at it. I couldn’t have imagined
I’d ever keep writing it, let alone finish it.
When I was fifteen, my little brother and I, the only two
kids left at home, took a grueling two-day road-trip with our parents to our
cousins’ house in Florida
for vacation. Houston reaches Florida
by the long, skinny arm of Interstate 10, the only decent bicep of the trip
being New Orleans .
I have no idea what got into my father’s head, but he decided to trot the four
of us right down Bourbon Street .
We’d only recently moved to Houston from a small
town in Arkansas ,
so we hadn’t even acclimated to crowds yet. I’m pretty sure he had no idea what
he was going to walk his family into the middle of. I was not an innocent
adolescent. Our family had dangled on the precipice of hell for several years.
I would have told you I wasn’t naïve, but I’d never walked by a strip bar in my
life. Not sure I’d ever driven by one. The pictures posted at the front doors
were explicit and so disturbing that I couldn’t shake them out of my head for
years. Dodging drunks, we finally made our way to Jackson Square past painters and sidewalk
entertainers and palm readers. It was the wildest thing I’d ever seen.
Fast forward many years, and Keith and I would go back to
that city for anniversaries and bask in the deep-fried goodness of New Orleans ’s brighter
side. Still plenty spicy. Just not as seedy.
Fast forward a few more years, and I was asked to teach the
women of Franklin
Avenue Baptist
Church at their annual
conference. I guess it was as close as I’ve ever come to love at first sight.
That whole congregation accepted this white girl like I was one of them. To be
loved and embraced by them is still one of the greatest honors and joys of my
ministry life. We are blood kin in Jesus. My Bible study Breaking Free was
taped in their auditorium. When my younger brother was transferred there for
work, FABC also threw their arms open wide to him. He attended that wonderful,
warm church for several years until he was transferred again.
Readers are wondering
about the striking cover: can you give us a clue as to what the three sharp
finials on the wrought iron gate represent?
The thought didn’t come to Karen and me until we were
deliberating over covers, but when we finally decided on that one, we thought
perhaps those finials were pretty decent representations of three primary
characters in the book, all just about that strong and just about that
flexible.
The characters who
populate Saint Sans are multigenerational and multiethnic. How did you come to
select your cast? Are they fictional representatives of people whom you’ve come
to know?
I always figured if I ever wrote fiction, the characters
would have a certain obligation to mirror the figures in my life, particularly
since I have known and loved some terribly quirky people, but that just didn’t
happen. They are all bits and pieces of this one and that one. The one male
resident comes very close to a man I love dearly but not so close he’d even
recognize the resemblance. Caren, the young medical student, is patterned after
a friend of mine in New Orleans
by that same name, but only in physical appearance.
The novel
demonstrates how the power of Christ can break the bondage of generational
patterns of sin, a theme you explored in your groundbreaking Bible study Breaking
Free. Are there ways in which you feel a novel can deliver this message even
beyond the scope of a nonfiction work?
I deeply hope so. I think virtually any reader can recognize
how darkness and detachment and disillusion can invade an entire family. These
toxic dynamics can be so pervasive that the thought never even occurs to us
life could exist any other way. We just accept things how they are and don’t
realize how dramatically God can change us and, through us, perhaps an entire
environment. I’m praying for someone to pick it up who could never picture
herself as the type Jesus would seek out. I don’t know what people on the
sidewalk think they’re seeing through the windows of a church, but after thirty
years of active, hands-on ministry, I promise you those inside have had the
same kinds of problems, addictions, fears, crises, losses, disappointment,
injuries, and tragedies. But the thing is, you could live in a church and still
never let Jesus do what He longs to do.
What are some of the
compromises depicted in The Undoing of
Saint Silvanus that many women make in search for security and the desire
for relationship?
For starters, so many girls, starting in early adolescence,
think they’re only as valuable as they are desirable. Women develop an
inordinate measure of their identity from how men respond to them. You’ll see
some of the effects of that in the novel. As many great guys as we know and can
find out there, only Jesus gets to define an individual’s worth. A lot of women
are also trained to think that any man in your life or bed is better than no
man. They don’t know who they are apart from a man. I’m pro-relationship and
still believe in romance, but how on earth do we know what we have to offer any
relationship when we do not even know who we are? Until we begin to know who we
are, our choices regarding what we want can get woefully skewed.
How can shame and
failure drive us away from God and the people we need most in our lives?
It’s can be one big miserable cycle. We feel shame and we
don’t even know why. Our shame sets us up for failure. Our failure creates more
shame. Increased shame brings on more failure because we naturally act out of
our deepest beliefs. And that’s the way it goes until it either buries us or we
let God break the cycle. Shame always thrives in secret so we avoid letting the
very people in who could help us the most and point the way out. But all that
can change. And then we can be the ones who point the way out for others.
Which of the characters in your book best illustrate the
need to build bridges toward healing?
I’d have to say the two that start out on opposite sides of
the Golden Gate . Never underestimate the huge
step that can be taken by crossing a smaller bridge, though. As I reflect on
the story line, small bridges are all over it.
How has your own
family responded to your first work of fiction? Can we anticipate more novels
in the future?
Do you want to hear something wild? This is the first book
of mine I think Keith Moore may read from beginning to end. Makes me laugh. He
has supported and prayed over every book I’ve ever written and been so proud to
keep a box of them in the back of his pickup truck to give away. But I’ve never
seen him sit down with one and appear to get lost in it. It has intrigued me,
pleased me and made me really antsy. I’ll tell you what’s awkward: putting on
my mascara for work in the morning while he’s within eyeshot, his face in the
novel, and I’m trying to read his expression in the mirror to see if he likes
it or not. He’s especially proud of it somehow. He told me that again this
morning.
My daughters are so happy I did it. Amanda has always wanted
me to try it because she has memories of bedtime stories I made up for them
when they were little. She is a very busy pastor’s wife and mom and was
expecting their third child over the last months I worked on the manuscript, so
she never read any of it in process but encouraged me profusely to stay with
it. Melissa couldn’t have had a bigger impact on the novel moving to press. Her
role caught me by surprise because she’s usually neck-deep in academic work. My
intention was to have my big brother as my first reader. I chose him because he
appreciates the genre, he’s tremendously creative, not easy to please, and
gut-honest. He’s also way outside my serving world and I felt like, if he
canned it, nobody would ever even have to know it existed. As it turned out, he
had a work crisis and couldn’t read it. That’s when Melissa stepped in and
insisted she was my reader. I initially argued that she’d have a hard time
telling her own mother, “Bless your heart, you’ve worked so hard but it
stinks.” She countered that she could do it and I handed it over. The feeling
of vulnerability was nearly overwhelming. It was nothing but crickets for the
next 48 hours and I was so nervous I could have thrown up. Finally I thought up
a reason to text her about something else entirely and she jotted back an
abbreviated reply: “Can’t talk right now. Wrapped up in a novel.” I was so
relieved, I laughed and cried.
As for my grandkids, they simply wanted to know if they were
in it. Made me laugh and made me wish I could say yes!
More novels? I just have no idea. No plans for another right
now but I didn’t plan this one. So many factors would have to come together for
me to know it was the will of God. A story line, obviously, but also a
steadfast sense that a temporary departure into fiction serves an
important-enough purpose to carve out the many hours it takes. I want my life
to bear fruit in the name of Jesus to the glory of God. If my shot at this
genre bears very little fruit in the lives of readers, I’ll know my job is to stick
entirely with nonfiction. I have dear friends who are called by God to
primarily write fiction, and at times they take temporary departures into
nonfiction. They’re looking for the same thing I am: leadership from God on the
best use of their gifting and time to His great glory. We want to please God
and serve in a way that really helps people. My nonnegotiable calling is to
teach Bible study. That one stays in place no matter what. God willing, that’s
what I’ll do till I die. But I so hope and pray someone is also served and
helped by the story woven through the chapters of this novel. Dear Lord in
heaven, I pray this wasn’t a colossal waste of time. We’ll find out.
Many authors write a
bit of themselves into one of their characters. Do any of the residents of
Saint Sans have a little Beth in them?
Not nearly as much as I thought they would! But they’re all
the kind of people I’m somehow drawn toward, for better or for worse. Jillian
reflects some of my old insecurities—at times in the novel, painfully so.
Adella, the manager, has a little bit of me in her but not as much as I
planned. I don’t know what happened there. I just started liking the characters
for themselves. They each sort of went off their own way.
Is there anything
you’d like to tell us about the novel that I haven’t asked?
I can only think of one thing right now and I’ll set it up
by supplying the question.
“Beth, did you enjoy the process of writing a novel?”
Every single second of it.
Thank you, Beth
Moore, for allowing me to introduce your novel to my readers. I am eager to
read it.
Readers, here are links to the book. By using one when you order, you help support this blog.
The Undoing of Saint Silvanus - Christianbook.comThe Undoing of Saint Silvanus - Amazon Hardback
The Undoing of Saint Silvanus - Kindle
The Undoing of Saint Silvanus - Audio
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28 comments:
I'm looking forward to reading Beth's first novel! I've done many Bible studies with her and feel like I know her too. It will be fun to see how she weaves her love for Scripture into the story. Thanks for the interview and info on the book!
Beth Moore is famous for her motivating women's Bible studies so I look forward to reading her first work of fiction. Thanks for featuring this interview.
Connie from KY
cps1950(at)gmail(dot)com
I've done many of Beth's studies and attended one of her events when she came to Springfield, IL several years ago. I'm excited to read her debut novel!
Pam from Arlington Heights IL
pamsmeyers at gmail dot com
Excited to read Beth"s first fictional story. It sounds so interesting.
Thanks for the giveaway! I'm from BC Canada
How exciting, Lena, hosting Beth Moore. I love her books. She is such a blessing to the body of Christ. I think it's awesome she's writting a fictional book. Add me to the drawing for sure.
Congratulations on your first novel. I like the sound of this.
Mary P
QLD AUSTRALIA
We already have people lined up at the circulation desk in the church library wanting to read this book. Thanks for entering me in your giveaway.
Janet E.
von1janet(at)gmail(dot)com
Florida
I'm looking forward to reading"The Undoing of Saint Silvanus". It'll be a huge departure though from all of the Beth Moore bible studies I've done! Elaine in Wisconsin
Sounds like an interesting book. Can't wait to read it.
Sandy Q. TX
Sounds good. new author for me. north platte nebraska.
I've done several of her Bible studies....loved them. Am very anxious to read this one. Thanks for your giveaway!
Jackie Smith in GA
I always enjoy Beth Moore studies and simulcasts, and have even seen her speak in person. :-) I would love to read this new book.
Melissa in Mechanicsville VA
I've known the name Beth Moore, and her teaching for years! How exciting to have a novel by her now, too!!!
I'm Robin, and I'm in South Carolina.
I'm so excited to read this novel! Anything by Beth has got to be wonderful.
Beth Moore is one of my favorites! I'm really looking forward to her first fictional novel! Thanks for sharing the interview & chance to win her book! rw620 AT aol DOT com
Enter me! Love Beth Moore's works!
Abigail Mitchell
Clarksville VA
Thanks for the interview with Beth to get the background for her first novel. It sounds like one I'd enjoy.
pmkellogg56[at]gmail[dot]com
Kansas
I have done a few of Beth's Bible studies , and I am sure I will thoroughly enjoy her first novel!
Patty in SC
I would love to read Beth's first fiction book. Good interview.
Brenda in VA
I've been so excited for this book to come out. I just love the cover, too!
Dianna in TN
Steps of faith are always exciting. I look forward to reading your book, Beth.
Jeanne Doyon, CT
I have done several of her Bible studies and am looking forward to reading her fiction debut.
Melissa O in NC
I love reading novels that are the first try at fiction by the author! This one sounds great!
Diana from California, US
Enter me in your awesome giveaway!!
Conway SC.
Count me in!
Thank you for the chance.
Melody B from the province of Quebec, Canada
I would absolutely love to read Beth's novel as I've learned a lot from doing her bible studies.
Monica, Ontario
Look forward to reading this! I'm from Tarpon springs, FL!
I have studied a lot of Beth's Bible studies and look forward to her first novel.
Beth from IA
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