Congratulations to San Antonio's Gordon Atkinson! Foy On the Road to Lost (Material Media) won an IPPY Award silver medal in Christian Fiction. This is my review, published in the new issue of Lone Star Literary Life. Foyis a little gem.
LITERARY FICTION Gordon Atkinson Foy: On the Road to LostMaterial Media Paperback, 978-0-9967-5355-5, (also available as an e-book), 194 pgs., $15.95 March 1, 2017
Minister Foy Davis is having a bad week. His wife, and mother of his daughters, has served him with divorce papers, then two days later, in a more or less mutual decision (“like two lovers staring at each other and saying, almost simultaneously, We need to talk”), he’s been removed and/or resigned as pastor of a Baptist church in San Antonio. Foy’s midlife crisis of faith has been building throughout his adult life. He wonders what it would be like to be “a regular person.” As he’s leaving the church for the last time, he reaches for a vial of rose oil used for anointing the sick, gifted to him by an Episcopal-priest friend, and anoints his own forehead.
Foy sets out to discover what he suspects he might’ve been missing. In New Orleans. During Mardi Gras. He may even take up cigars. Emotionally volatile—swinging from anger to sorrow and back again—Foy is weary of being responsible for his congregation (for their souls, no less), and thinks he’d like to be “mildly empathetic, across a vast emotional chasm,” instead. He has “fantasized about … absolute freedom” for years, but in the event, he may find that it really is just another word for nothing left to lose. No matter how he tries, ecumenical Foy can’t make himself stop caring about people.
Foy: On the Road to Lost, the first novel by Gordon Atkinson, M.Div., doesn’t fit neatly into any of our convenient genres. It is only loosely a novel, as addressed in the Author’s Note. Each chapter is a self-contained unit, and the whole resembles a collection of linked short stories. These related tales are really a character sketch, but too finely developed and richly detailed to be termed a “sketch.”
Atkinson is at his best writing about Foy’s childhood, as a small child in Fort Davis, then as an adolescent in Houston. I’m reminded of the story of Harper Lee’s agent telling her to rework her book from Scout’s point of view—that’s how good Atkinson is with the boy Foy. Another standout character is Foy’s mother, a philosophy student who put away her ambitions to settle down to marriage, motherhood, and the expectations placed on a preacher’s wife in the 1960s. “The Sunday school teachers swaddled [Foy’s] mind every Sunday morning,” Atkinson writes. ”Sunday nights she [Foy’s mother] took him outside under the stars … [and] carefully unwound the swaddling clothes and set him free.”
Kudos belong to the design team responsible for Foy. This slim, bright yellow book sports beautiful end pages of black-and-white photographic images of the mountains of West Texas and charmingly whimsical pencil sketches of a character we assume to be Foy. Even the typeface has a story; it involves a dispute between the owners of a nineteenth-century British press resulting in every piece of the metal typeface being dumped into the Thames. There are so many small, literary jewels in Foy: On the Road to Lost.
This is the story of George H. Mahon, a man who went to Congress in 1935, when the House Committee on Appropriations still allocated a small amount of money to buy military horses. Forty-four years later, when Mahon retired as Chairman of that same committee, the committee was debating funds to purchase a bomber capable of traveling at 2,000 miles an hour. With a career spanning nearly a half century—spanning almost the entire Cold War—Mahon grew from a West Texas country lawyer to one of the most powerful men in the US House of Representatives, serving twenty-two consecutive terms from 1935–1978.
During his time in Congress, Mahon worked easily with the giants of government, enjoying the friendship and confidence of seven of the eight presidents with whom he served. He worked just as comfortably with his constituents in the Nineteenth Congressional District of Texas. Mahon served on several Congressional committees, but it is through his service on the House Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations that he had the greatest national impact. He often bragged that under his leadership the Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations was the most non-partisan committee in Congress. Mahon led the subcommittee with a strong but gentle hand that earned him the respect of all who served with him.
Janet M. Neugebauer is deputy director of the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University. Her many works include Lambshead Legacy and Plains Farmer.
Kent Hance is a former Chancellor of the Texas Tech University System and a former member of the US House of Representatives.
My Lone Star Literary Life review for Easter Sunday was of WELCOME HOMELESS: ONE MAN'S JOURNEY OF DISCOVERING THE MEANING OF HOME (Thomas Nelson) by Alan Graham of Austin's Mobile Loaves & Fishes.
SOCIAL ISSUES / RELIGION & SPIRITUALITY
Alan Graham (with Lauren Hall) Welcome Homeless: One Man’s Journey of Discovering the Meaning of Home
Thomas Nelson
Paperback, 978-0-7180-8655-8, (also available as an e-book, an audio book, and on Audible), 240 pgs., $16.99
March 7, 2017
‘Notice it doesn’t say, “Feed the hungry, unless you think he might just have the munchies … Or, “Clothe the naked, unless he doth get drunk on Jack Daniel’s.”’
Alan Graham was struck by inspiration in 1998: food trucks. He envisioned a truck to feed Austin’s homeless where they live. Graham recruited five friends (the “six-pack”), and they pooled their money to buy an old catering truck. Inspired by God’s choice of Mary, an impoverished, uneducated peasant, and the example of Francis of Assisi, Graham understood that it’s about “communion through community, and community through connection,” and “bridging the gap between the divinity of God and dignity of man.” New, warm socks and a choice of Popsicle flavors are useful for this.
Some twenty-odd years later, Mobile Loaves & Fishes has served more than five million meals with the help of more than eighteen thousand volunteers. The mission has expanded to include (“Throw your fear away”) Street Retreats during which volunteers live on the streets with the homeless, micro-enterprises that allow the homeless to earn money with dignity, and the Community First! Village that includes not only housing but a grocery store, workshops, a clinic, a playground, and a dog park, among other amenities.
Welcome Homeless: One Man’s Journey of Discovering the Meaning of Home is Alan Graham’s spiritual memoir and autobiography, but more than that it is an explanation of “the gospel con carne,” and a demonstration of Mobile Loaves & Fishes’ philosophical cornerstone of community. Related in an engaging, colloquial style, and filled with gentle, good-natured humor (“It was like something out of a fairy tale, except instead of a Renaissance era king and queen, it was a badass Latino gangster and his wife”), Welcome Homeless is an inspiration and an exhortation to abandon our comfort zones and to attend not just to the passion, but to the compassion, of Jesus.
Believing human connections are meant to be “relational, not transactional,” Graham befriended the homeless men, women, and children on Austin’s streets, and it changed his life and his faith. “It allowed me to have the kind of faith that doesn’t ignore what’s underneath the overpass … behind the back alley … digging in the Dumpsters,” Graham writes. “It allowed me to know a God that doesn’t pretend what’s happening isn’t happening but, rather, is in the Dumpster too.”
Graham sprinkles facts and figures throughout his narrative, and quotes the Didache, C. S. Lewis, and Saint Augustine, but the bulk is comprised of the stories of people he has met. We go Dumpster-diving with J. P. Burris, meet Gordy the Gentle Giant and a transgender Navajo woman who earned a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Texas while living on the street, and follow the ups and downs of the love story of Brük and Robin. The photographic portraits of these individuals are a thoughtful inclusion.
In the introduction to Welcome Homeless, Graham states his goal for the book: He hopes ‘[we] will start to see the great “I AM” in the “least of these.”’ Mission accomplished, Mr. Graham. I laughed aloud, and I wiped away tears. I can’t imagine a better book for this Easter Sunday.
Rock House Cafe and Gallery, National Poetry Month reading: BorderSenses Presents The Barbed Wire Open Mic Series featuring Poets from the Tumblewords Project, 8PM
A pacemaker should have saved oil and gas magnate Nathan Moore’s life. Instead, it provided his killer with a seemingly perfect means of execution.
A bombing at one of Nathan’s oil rigs days earlier indicates his death could be part of a bigger conspiracy, a web Special Agent Tori Templeton must untangle. But her first order of business is separating the personal from the professional—the victim’s wife, her best friend, is one of the FBI’s prime suspects.
Clearing Sally’s name may be the biggest challenge of her career, but Tori finds an unexpected ally in the newest member of the task force, recently reinstated Deputy US Marshal Cole Jeffers. As Tori and Cole dig deeper into Nathan’s personal and business affairs, they uncover more than they bargained for. And the closer they get to finding the real killer—and to each other—the more intent someone is on silencing them for good.
Watch the book trailer!
Praise for Deep Extraction…
“Combined with intense action and stunning twists, this search for truth keeps readers on the edges of their favorite reading chairs.” Romantic Times
“Mills many fans will devour” Library Journal
Goodreads readers praise Deep Extraction:
“This was truly an amazing, suspenseful read that can be held up as an example of what good Christian suspense should be.”
“DiAnn Mills' writing is evocative of an excellent crime show. Sharp and to the point. Just how I imagine law enforcement work, think and talk.”
“Mills' has captured the rush of adrenaline along with a good romance. Suspense and adventure are the real stars of this book. Her motto is, "Expect an Adventure," and she achieves it in this book.”
ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN
while the dead slept. Which was why some would say a woman shouldn’t tread
alone through a cemetery at 2:55 on a Tuesday morning in April. But possible
danger had never stopped Houston FBI Special Agent Tori Templeton, especially
when her mind marched with determination. Her body refused to give in to rest,
but it wasn’t a violent crime robbing her of sleep.
The worn path below a black sky ended at
Kevin’s gravesite. She was here to visit the one person who could help her make
sense of a puzzling world.
Tonight, like many nights in the past, she
made her way to Kevin’s final resting place to talk to him about work, life,
problems, and victories. Maybe someday she’d figure out his intrigue with God.
Her brother. Her friend. The one she
looked up to and treasured.
Tori didn’t stalk a cemetery because of
some superstition that he lay beneath a marble stone and could communicate with
her. She visited the site because it signified peace. Maybe by a weird osmosis,
she’d find what had given Kevin strength. She wanted to believe he lived
pain-free with his God. No cancer. No side effects of chemo and radiation. An
eternal home with a God he embraced tighter than life. At least he’d claimed
those beliefs before he breathed his last.
“Special Agent Templeton?” At the sound of the
voice, a twinge of annoyance filled her spirit. The man greeting her was a
friend, except she wanted to be alone. No need to face him. “Yes, Officer
Richards.”
“Saw your car, thought I’d check on you.”
“I’m a creature of habit.”
“I noticed. Nothing’s stirring, so I’ll
leave you to your thoughts.” The sadness in his voice drew up a well of
compassion, and she turned to him. “Wait. How’s your family?” The man walked
the graveyard shift—literally—and he might need a listening ear more than she should
ponder the existence of a good God in a world plagued with unrest.
“The same. Ups and downs mixed with
hardheads and love.” He sighed and scanned the area. “Nice night.”
A familiar insect’s call reached her ears.
“We have a choir.” She smiled into the shadows, where a light, twenty feet
away, illuminated his stocky frame and highlighted his silver-gray hair, giving
him a halo effect. She stared above his head at a slice of the moon resting on
a canvas of stars.
“Cicadas are to the night as robins are to
the day.”
“Well stated,” she said. “I never pay
attention to them until it’s dark and quiet.” She brushed aside a leaf on
Kevin’s gravestone. “We haven’t talked in over a week. Did your son join the
Navy?”
“Yes. A good choice. I pray he learns discipline
and respect for himself and others.” He said the pray word. Not what she wanted
to hear, and she drew in a breath. “Your daughter?”
“Agreed to rehab. Another prayer
answered.”
Kevin had used the same language, and look
where it got him. Was her brother’s confidence in a divine being a way to
endure the devastation of cancer? A crutch in the midst of excruciating pain?
Always the same questions as she searched for the why of tragedies.
DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. She combines unforgettable characters with unpredictable plots to create action-packed, suspense-filled novels.
Her titles have appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards; and been finalists for the RITA, Daphne Du Maurier, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests. Library Journal presented her with a Best Books 2014: Genre Fiction award in the Christian Fiction category for Firewall.
DiAnn is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers; a member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association; International Thriller Writers, and the Faith, Hope, and Love chapter of Romance Writers of America. She is co-director of The Author Roadmap with social media specialist Edie Melson where she continues her passion of helping other writers be successful. She speaks to various groups and teaches writing workshops around the country.
DiAnn has been termed a coffee snob and roasts her own coffee beans. She’s an avid reader, loves to cook, and believes her grandchildren are the smartest kids in the universe. She and her husband live in sunny Houston, Texas.
DiAnn is very active online and would love to connect with readers on any of the social media platforms listed atwww.diannmills.com.
