Story Trumps Structure (and two other books on writing)

Posted on February 11, 2025 by lettersfromheartscontent

Two years ago, after a career of teaching children how to create, I sat down to make some art myself.

Of all the arts I explored—song-writing, fabric art, acrylics, aquarium- and terrarium-making, for example, writing had the most patient and persistent call.

When I was young, I wrote all the time. Over the years I’ve published articles and written poetry. I never, ever had the hunger to write a novel, but to my surprise, that’s what I am doing now. I started my book in early 2024 and finished the first draft on January 17, 2025. (Yes, I celebrated.) It is YA and it is ugly. But it is mine and I will make it beautiful, just you wait and see.

I’m learning as I go. It wasn’t until I began that I discovered what the questions were. So I’ve been reading books on writing, and one of the first was Saves the Cat! Writes a Novel1 by Jessica Brody.

I had sketched out the plot before I read that book. The book showed me I had it all wrong and so I obligingly molded my idea to what it taught. It felt like squeezing a foot into Cinderella’s glass slipper. It sorta fit and I hobbled through the writing, getting better and better at writing chapters as I got to love my characters and discovered what the story was about.

But the climax didn’t work because something was fundamentally wrong with my story. I can’t blame the Saves the Cat! [STC!], because—newby writer. But now I am reading Story Trumps Structure; How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules2 and lights are coming on in all of imagination’s rooms.

First, the author allows for the complexity of storytelling. I have read fiction that doesn’t fit neatly in the 15-beat structure explained in STC! Or if it does, I find the quantitative reasoning of STC! less suited to my way of thinking than the qualitative wisdom of Story Trumps Structure [STS].

STS feels more organic. It focuses on the reader’s emotional journey and expectations. It respects the reader, and as a reader myself, I appreciate that. This passage made me realize it would be worth my time to deepen my story:

Today’s readers are discerning and demanding. You’re fighting against thousands of television shows and video games, millions of books and movies, and billions of websites and tweets for people’s attention. Writing multilayered tales that emotionally engage readers is the best way to keep them enthralled by your story.3

His analysis works for me. He says:

Four things keep readers flipping pages—concern, curiosity, escalation, and enjoyment. If readers don’t care what happens, or they stop wondering what will happen, or they sense that the most important things have already happened, or they’re not entertained by what is happening, they’ll lost interest in the story.

Actually, that last reason—enjoyment—can hardly be overrated. As ludicrous as a story may be, as long as readers are having fun with it, they’ll be forgiving and keep turning pages.4

Yep! Checks out!

His emphasis on the emotional qualities of a story echoes another book I read this winter, The Emotional Craft of Fiction; How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface5. That book had me thinking about the emotional reactions of my characters. I knew I had been writing flat characters, figuring Draft Zero was about working out the plot. In my later chapters, I practiced some of the 34 techniques taught in The Emotional Craft of Fiction.

For me, STS confirms the necessity of the emotional journey for the reader and shows me how to shape my novel with that in mind. It asks the right questions. When I sit down with STS, I have a fistful of highlighters, a fountain pen, and my writing notebook. I take notes and then I brainstorm to solve my problems. My notebook is a wonderful mess of outrageous ideas.

The problem with the climax? It turns out my problem-to-be-solved is a subplot and that my protagonist needs a better reason to begin his journey in my Portal-Quest Fantasy6. As I mined my imagination along these veins, I uncovered some crystalline rocks that, if tapped here and there, could become jewels that will sparkle for the reader.

If I had to recommend a book to a young writer, it would be Story Trumps Structure first. While the others have taught me lessons I have successfully incorporated, STS is a no-nonsense gray-haired craftsman who guides my whittling while he carves a mantelpiece for a mansion.

With books such as Story Trumps Structure maybe I could complete—someday—a truly beautiful novel.

I’m moving Letters from Heart’s Content from Word Press to Substack. LFHC is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free subscriber. https://rutheholleran.substack.com/

1 Brody, Jessica, Saves the Cat! Writes a Novel (New York: Ten Speed Press, 2018)

2 James, Steven, Story Trumps Structure (Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, 2014)

3 Ibid, page 42.

4 Ibid, page 56

5 Maass, Donald, The Emotional Craft of Fiction (Writer’s Digest Books, 2016)

6 From Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn, who apparently despises the genre for all the reasons I love it.

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Drought in a Deluge

Posted on October 8, 2024 by lettersfromheartscontent

How do you bury the dead?

The unknown neighbor from somewhere upstream whose body was among the tangled flood debris left in what used to be your yard–what do you do when disaster cuts you off from the services that support daily life, severed from the comfort of an ordered community? Once the man who was my neighbor leaves his body, it quickly begins to rot. Without electricity, roads, and communication to connect us, we’re alone with stone, wood, water, and mud.

When we lose the intricate net of civilization that lifts us all out of a beastly existence, the work to survive becomes everything. The families of the flood-stricken communities are in desperate need of help. And I feel helpless.

In 2011, when Hurricane Irene dumped its rain on Vermont as a tropical storm, rivers swelled far beyond normal flood lines. The power of all that water racing down our steep mountainsides scoured river beds and dragged homes off their foundations. 34 bridges were closed and several covered bridges were damaged or destroyed. A father and son lost their lives when they went to check on Rutland’s town water system. Four lives in total were lost. All Vermonters were haunted by the damage.

That was nothing, nothing compared to what the South has suffered with Helene.

Last May I drove a rental car from Charlotte to Black Mountain NC for the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference. I drove up the road along Flat Creek in Montreat to attend church. I vividly remember the modest houses on the flats before the road ascended, catching glimpses of someone mowing a lawn, one sitting on the porch drinking coffee, one weeding a pretty garden. The homes were made of wood, and struck me as ‘home built’ by enterprising young families, such as my own in Vermont. Distinctive. Having personality. Homes, not vacation rentals.

Surely, they washed away. Did the people who lived there survive?

The memory of that quiet community pierces my heart like a long thorn, making my heartbeats painful day and night. Is it too dramatic to say my soul is weeping?

“O God, You are my God. Earnestly I seek You. My soul thirsts for You; my body longs for You in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

Psalm 63 drips in irony when I apply it to this present grief, because it comes from a devastation of water, not a drought.

And yet, I keenly feel a spiritual drought. My soul weeps for a place to weep in the company of other weeping Christians. When I come to church, the very last thing I want is happy songs of praise and promise. I need to cry out the weight of this sorrow in hymns of suffering.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Refrain:
It is well with my soul,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

I long to walk into a holy place, a sanctuary with a vaulted ceiling that makes me look up, a vast place that makes me feel small and God great, alone yet intimately known. Then I will be assured that God sees my southern neighbors and works to relieve the suffering that He, in His mysterious majesty, allowed.

Why are you in despair, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Hope in God, and wait expectantly for Him,
for I shall again praise Him
for the help of His presence. Psalm 42

Photo by David Pavka on Unsplash
Photo by David Pavka on Unsplash

I will praise in joyful songs again, but first I need to sing the sorrow.

Wherever you are, my fellow grieving children of God, I weep with you as surely as we will shout our praises one day before the Throne.

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If We Can Admire Dutch Painting

Posted on July 9, 2024 by lettersfromheartscontent

I’m reading a poem a day, which is like working through the strangest Spotify playlist, curated by someone with curious taste. Some do not appeal, some are incomprehensible, but a few are gems that become my own treasure.

Here is one of the latter.

The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz experienced national socialism after the German conquest, communism under Stalin, and life in the United States from 1960 to 2004, when he died. He experienced first-hand the dehumanizing consequences of reductionist philosophies that evolved from the Enlightenment. When his poems come up in the anthology I always find connection.

In his poem “Realism” he refers to the Old Masters Dutch paintings, such as these. (The poem follows.)

Realism

We are not so badly off, if we can
Admire Dutch painting. For that means
We shrug off what we have been told
For a hundred, two hundred years. Though we lost
Much of our previous confidence. Now we agree
That those trees outside the window, which probably exist,
Only pretend to greenness and treeness
And that language loses when it tries to cope
With clusters of molecules. And yet, this here:
A jar, a tin plate, a half-peeled lemon,
Walnuts, a loaf of bread, last – and so strongly
It is hard not to believe in their lastingness.
And thus abstract art is brought to shame,
Even if we do not deserve any other.
Therefore I enter those landscapes
Under a cloudy sky from which a ray
Shoots out, and in the middle of dark plains
A spot of brightness glows. Or the shore
With huts, boats, and on yellowish ice
Tiny figures skating. All this
Is here eternally, just because, once, it was.
Splendor (certainly incomprehensible)
Touches a cracked wall, a refuse heap,
The floor of an inn, jerkins of the rustics,
A broom, and two fish bleeding on a board.
Rejoice! Give thanks! I raised my voice
To join them in their choral singing,
Amid their ruffles, collets, and silk skirts,
Already one of them, who vanished long ago.
And our song soared up like smoke from a censer.

-- Czeslaw Milosz, translated into English by author and Robert Hass

In the Dutch paintings of the 1600 and 1700s, ordinary items are treated as extraordinary. Unremarkable activity becomes immortalized. The mundane world is touched with glory and seems to say everything has an eternal value. This art says in its specificity that what we experience in daily life has meaning.

There is a kind of abstract art that mocks at the idea of knowing. Truth is unknowable. Beauty is an arbitrary human construct because molecules themselves don’t contain the quality of beauty. In the pursuit of what is true, it implies, we can’t claim a tree is beautiful or green or even that it truly exists. These are human perceptions and we are flawed judges. Why treat these things as though they have lasting value? By what authority does anything have value?

I read this poem to say, Yes, the ordinary things we encounter in our ordinary lives are saturated in meaning. They have spiritual significance which is not contained in their measurable physical presence. The holy shines through the mundane.

Look what the Dutch masters do with light. Grapes glisten; even dead fish gleam in silver opalescence.

Ordinary life has meaning and beauty. A lifetime of meal preparation, laundry, wiping noses, writing thank you cards, taking the elderly to lunch and listening to familiar stories–all this has made me closely examine what is true and what is significant. I am not wasting my life.

The philosophy that our senses are unreliable and that truth is unknowable falls flat in explaining the life we experience. Our human nature invariably seeks assurance that our lives have significance. When a philosophy of postmodernism–that truth is unknowable or that we are unable to perceive it–is enshrined in the arts it has no power to lift us up. It doesn’t inspire us or cause us to raise our eyes to something better.

As Milosz contemplates the images painted with care by the masters in contrast to the poverty of this widespread skepticism, Milosz is moved to praise and prayer. And I too think about the Christian message: that the Eternal took on a human body. God ate bread and drank wine and had conversations with real people. They touched him, heard him laugh, and saw him cry. They called him Y’shua, Jesus of Nazareth.

In his life, death, and resurrection Jesus opened a portal between divine and mundane. All of what we do resonates in eternity, that radiant world in which we now stand but only dimly perceive and only rarely.

These grapes and skaters live as long as these paintings endure, but we will live longer because we are works of art created by God, made for a purpose and endowed with significance.

Remember this when you stand before smug abstract art that gravely tells you life has no meaning. You know it isn’t the truth.

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A Joy for Ever

Posted on July 3, 2024 by lettersfromheartscontent

As I rode my bike this morning I knew I was experiencing that rare gift: a perfect day. These are the long idyllic days of Vermont, when the sun saunters up the vast parabola and down to the golden hour. When the scent of baking pine needles and an uncut hay field speak, “Summer is forever.” It is all beautiful and I want to store it in my bones for the dark days of winter.

A wise old friend of mine often quotes Keat’s Endymion’s opening lines:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: 
Its loveliness increases; it will never 
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” That’s a new idea for me. Often beauty has been a sharp pain to me and certainly not an enduring joy.

My friend once asked me about the last line of a sonnet I wrote about spring defeating winter and bringing flowers back to the land. I wrote:

So fleeting are a thousand dainty things
In all our dear and devastating springs.

Why “devastating”?

Beauty and I have a weird relationship. Sometimes it brings deep pain and no joy. Beauty stays beyond arm’s reach. We cannot embrace. Beauty, says my heart at these times, cannot be trusted to stay. A stunning sunset? An orchestra rehearsing of something lush and poignant? A sapphire summer day? They break against the hardness of my heart. Beauty cannot enter. I yearn for it, but I let it pass me by. I am afraid of breaking my heart.

But this poem opened a new way for me. Now beauty has a permanent pathway to my heart. I freely open the doors and windows to it. When I encounter something beautiful, it becomes mine. I own it. I named it beautiful and it belongs to me. It cannot be taken from me. I store it deep in my treasure house and keep it forever. As long as I have memory, it is my memory and memories are the vessels of personhood.

No cynicism can deny the objective pleasure they give me. No bitter outlook on life can blight what I truly treasure. No fear of loss prevents me from giving my heart.

It is a matter of trust, too. I will find beauty again. There will be suffering and loneliness–days of dreary rain or slimy mud when even my soul is stained gray. Some days in late winter I cannot find any beauty at all. That’s when I’ll open the storehouse and remember forward to the days of summer, because they always arrive.

In his song, “I Sit Beside the Fire”, Bilbo tells Frodo in Lothlorien that he has enjoyed his life through the seasons but he knows a spring will arrive one day that he will not be there to see. This is how he finishes:

But all the while I sit and think 
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

He keeps his heart open to visits with the people he loves. They will come.

For a Christian, there is more: when every beautiful thing is behind us and only gray and pain ahead, we know there is a forever where beauty never fades and joy endures.

Instead of fearing to embrace a beauty that will not last, I now believe every beauty that ever touches my heart is a promise of the beauty found everywhere in the presence of God.

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Telling a Better Story

Posted on May 26, 2024 by lettersfromheartscontent

I am typing at my desk at the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference, in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

(If any bad guys are reading this, I’ll have you know I left behind the forester. Don’t let his Santa Claus vibe fool you; he’ll either force you to listen to his fishing stories or make you pull weeds in the garden. You have been warned.)

I worshipped this morning with the lovely people of Christ Community Church in Montreat. I was introduced to at least 20 different people with open, joyful countenances, and shook old Barry’s hand so firmly he started warning off the others. The pastor spoke on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, based on the passage in Acts 16 where Paul and his entourage toured the region but at each city sensed the Holy Spirit say, No, not here. Not until Paul had a dream of a man in Macedonia saying, “Come over here and help!” did Paul find an open door. When the others heard it, they agreed and there they went.

When people ask, as they did this morning, “What do you write?”, sometimes I just say I am a writer wannabe. But sometimes I tell them I want to tell stories that bypass the gatekeepers and flow into the heart where the yearnings are. I want to write stories that tug us away from the unquestioned assumptions and the iron framework of this culture’s narrative about who we are and what we are to do. I want to write stories that take the reader out of bondage into the wide place of grace upon grace expressed by Christ’s incarnation and resurrection.

No arguments will do in these bewildering days. Only narratives can speak to those who think they have sound reasons for dismissing the Christian worldview. I believe stories–imaginative, winsome, and authentic ones–are the bridge I can build to the people I love so much who simply cannot see that they cannot see. “Let me tell you a story,” I want to say. “Once upon a time, a young woman…”

“What do you write?” Well, I can tell you what I have written. Essays in this blog on all kinds of things but mostly my reflections on art and life. Articles for Classical Conversations which still live on their site. Songs. Poems. An annual Christmas letter full of stories meant to tickle the reader. Lots of letters to people. Journal entries for fifty years, as of May 11, 2024.

I credit journal writing for the honing of my writing skill, ever since I gave myself permission to scratch out an awkward passage and try it again until I was satisfied. It gets messy, but nobody is going to read it; certainly not my kids, who can’t read sloppy cursive. It is like a code. My secrets are safe.

Here I am, at this writers conference, open to hear from the Holy Spirit for my path forward. I am devouring Telling a Better Story; How to Talk About God in a Skeptical Age, a book recommended to me and the only reading I brought for my travels. It raises the right questions and good answers. Yes, and yes. I think I know what door beckons me.

(Can we just agree to ignore the fact that this open door is to the bathroom?)

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8 reasons to keep a five-year memory book

Posted on February 10, 2024 by lettersfromheartscontent

Nine years ago I started my first one-year journal. I’m grateful for eight reasons.

1. Confining thoughts to four, five, or six tight lines requires the writer to be succinct and brief, a habit that has benefitted my writing–and speaking–elsewhere. Nevertheless, my tiny writing lets me squeeze in a lot of highlights and commentary.

2. It makes us reflect on the day before. I always write up yesterday first thing in the morning after I have had some distance, but not too much. I perceive the day’s highlights but it is still fresh and interesting to me. It forms the cap to the pen of intention; I began the day with a plan and here is what came of it. Ready for the next.

3. Your few notes can spark vivid memories of a particular day in your past. I believe the best memories that survived my teen years are the ones I described in my journals of that time. While writing in my five-year books I have grinned many times to read what I was doing on this date in years past. I often share these in the family chat, Memory Keeper that I am.

4. Don’t avoid the mundane as you record the sublime. I learn that I am still bothered by the time I waste on reels. The mention of a teacher’s meeting two years ago makes me rejoice all over again that I have retired. I see a student’s name and feel wistful that I can no longer watch her grow. The ordinary and the extraordinary are both interesting the more distance I have from them.

5. Reviewing old entries is an antidote to discouragement. In them, I can see the progress made over time. Yesterday’s hopes became today’s joy, and today’s small beginnings will find completion in due time.

6. You learn how meaningful each day is in the aggregate. One sea stone collected from the shore is a memory. A collection of stones from every shore you’ve explored is an expression of who you are.

7. You may write the effects of a widespread upheaval and become a part of history. The many blank pages in early 2020 and the completely filled-in dates since then testify to the new way I look at my days post-pandemic. Life can change drastically at any time so these captured memories will someday speak of a foreign way of living to a distant reader.

8. Logging is a way to treasure each day and loved one in it. I remember marveling at my grandfather’s habit of keeping a daily log. Looking over his shoulder I realized the days that seemed ordinary and forgettable to me were days he treasured. He collected them. He noticed their beauty and pain. My name was written in his record.

One last thing. I compared Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project; One-Sentence Journal, a Five-Year Record with Chronicle Books’ One Line a Day; A Five-Year Memory Book.

The Happiness Project has an inspirational thought at the heading of each page. Four lines available for notes.

The Happiness Project has an inspirational thought at the heading of each page. Four lines available for notes.

The One Line a Day book has six lines for writing.

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Review of Kindred Spirits by John F. Harrison

Posted on January 8, 2024 by lettersfromheartscontent

Kindred Spirits: Book Two of Solid Rock Survivors by John F Harrison

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


John F. Harrison certainly deals with “tough issues and thorny questions Christians often face but rarely discuss”, as he says in his author bio. Like dark chocolate, these books are “not too sweet”. In this second book of the Solid Rock Survivors the main character, Roz, journeys from passivity and weakness to agency and strength. The journey is believable; the plot is tight; the insights on church life are spot on.

We encounter issues I have certainly never seen discussed in Christian fiction. The theme of abusive church leadership continues in Book Two of the Solid Rock Survivor series. Rosalyn has been morbidly obese and is working hard to get healthy. We briefly see the tension of Christians dealing with LGBTQ policies in the workplace. The theme of justified violence for self-defense continues as Rosalyn comes under attack by a murderer without a conscience. We also encounter a ghost who has a part to play, and the rebellion of a church member who goes on to marry—horrors! A Reformed Baptist!! (I got a kick out of that.)

The author understands the complexity of human behavior. The tale is tightly told in the deep third person point of view, where we feel Roz’s stress and reactions and experience her inner thoughts. I enjoy the series, in part because it helps me to understand the dynamics of the abusive church leadership I suffered under and why my friends went along when they were told to sever all ties. I see their behavior in Roz’s, the meek sheep just trying to avoid catching the wrath of the abuser. I have never seen this issue treated in Christian fiction and thought he handled it with compassion, wisdom, and a good sense of outrage.

I enjoyed this book and recommend it to readers who want a good yarn and don’t need their stories to be sweet. For those who count, there is no swearing or sex or violence-as-entertainment. The sins on display are more egregious.



View all my reviews

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Walker Tale #14 Back to Cold River

Posted on September 17, 2023 by lettersfromheartscontent

The Grey Wolf’s army blocked the front and back gates of the town of Cold River. “General, should we surround the town?”

“No need, Major. There is no other way in. Send the word we attack just before dawn.”

***

After Walker hugged Sophia and his new friends, he started back up the mountain trail. His new shoes made it easy to climb. He was alone but not lonely, for a wind kept company with him. When it nudged him to take the right fork and leave the familiar way, he was not surprised.

This path ran along the mountain ridge. He ate and slept in a shelter above the clouds. At the end of the second day, he descended a steep trail through a forest of fir trees down to a familiar valley, the wind curling around him. He saw the town ahead, lit by the setting sun.

The wind pressed on him to leave the main road that led to the front gate, so he took the difficult footpath through the dark woods until the wall of the town loomed before him. A large window too high to reach was the only feature in the wall. He saw the shape of a woman in the window. When she saw him she held up her finger and he waited while she sent down a rope ladder. He climbed silently and she helped him in.

At last, she spoke. “The king sent you. Are you the hero who will fight the army?”

“All I have is the live ember of Auntie Betty’s riddle,” he said.

Her eyes grew large in wonder. “Come with me,” she said.

They left the house through the door on the street. She quickly led him through the winding lanes and alleys, stopping to knock on a few doors and beckon the ones who answered. Only a few street lamps were lit in order to keep the town dark. They moved swiftly through the shadows.

The woman, Hannah, gathered ten ember holders, one of whom was Auntie Betty. When she saw Walker, she hugged him fiercely but kept quiet. The whole town was under an order of silence. They stopped at last by the water-well in the center of town. The shops were closed. Only one dim light burned at the far end of the center square. They turned and looked to Walker expectantly.

He whispered, “I found the burning embers and brought one back. I didn’t wait for a hero. I thought you should have it right away.”

They each pulled out their ember box. As they dropped their grey coals, barely warm, in a heap in their midst, Walker could see their discomfort.

“How did they get so cool?” he asked.

One said, “I was too busy.” Another said, “I was too sick to come to the fire-ring and no one came for me.”

Around the circle came other answers: “I was ashamed.” “I was abused.” “I doubted.” “There was no shepherd.”

Walker dropped his ember and the extra. They fell in a streak of gold light onto the dark ones. The embers began to glow and grow warm and then they burst into flame. As the crackly fire grew large among them, their hearts grew warm and they beamed at one another around the circle.

Together they raised their faces to the sky and lifted their hands, palms open as though they offered something to the sky and were ready to receive.  One by one they praised the Maker in the name of the King. A wind circled them, ruffling their clothes and caressing them. A second time around the circle, they recited memorized promises from The Letters. Again around, they petitioned for protection for Cold River against the enemy. The wind blew strong. They sang a song of deep yearning, no longer silent, and the song rang out into the night.

At the end of the song, they grew still. The wind fell and their clothes settled. They waited expectantly.

***

The Grey Wolf stood in position behind the first line of his soldiers, ready to enter. He was about to nod to the drummer to give the signal when he heard a commotion behind him. Furious at this disobedience, he wheeled around. A messenger panted and went on one knee before him. “Your majesty, a message from home. Your gates are under attack and you are needed at once.”

The Grey Wolf signaled his army to turn away but he gazed one last time at the town and howled his frustration. Shortly after, the night watchmen blew trumpets to tell the glad news that the enemy had gone.

***

The ember-friends looked at one another in wonder. They began to laugh and cry in joy.

They collected their glowing embers. One remained. Before they could decide what to do, a young woman came out of a shadowed doorway, where she had been watching. She said, “Will the King take me, do you think?”

Hannah replied, “Yes, I know he will! He knew you would be here. See? An ember for you.”

Epilogue: The mayor thanked Walker with a ceremony and said, “I always knew you could do it,” which wasn’t exactly true but everyone knew the mayor didn’t like to be embarrassed. Walker stayed in Cold River for a while. The ember fellowship grew strong and met regularly. A few others joined them. The Grey Wolf lost interest in Cold River. Eventually, Walker continued his journey and had other adventures, but that is a story for another time.

End of Part I

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Walker Tale #13 Sophia’s Story

Posted on September 10, 2023 by lettersfromheartscontent

“Sophia!” said Walker. “Why aren’t you coming?”

“Oh Walker,” she said, “I have to keep going. I never told you –because, by the way, you never asked– that I have a mission from the King.”

This is how Sophia’s journey began.

Sophia heard about her cousin Mark’s accident when she found her mother crying. His back broke in a fall and he was paralyzed. When Sophia heard that Mark’s best friend had taken him to the old mines, where they were forbidden to go, she was angry. When she learned that the boy didn’t even visit Mark now, she was disgusted.

Day and night she imagined painful punishments. She could lure him to the mine shaft and push him in. “How do you like it?” she would gloat.

Maybe she could confront him and yell at him till he fell to her feet sobbing, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and she would just walk away.

Or he would get terribly sick with a disease that kept him in bed and she would come over and say, “It serves you right!”

She became bitter over the months that followed and her schoolmates commented on it. “You’re not fun anymore. We don’t want to play with you.” She didn’t care.

Her mother pulled her aside one day and said, “Sophia, no punishment will make Mark walk again. It is time to forgive.” But she could not.

One day she came home from school and found an unkempt man hunched at the kitchen table. His dusty clothes hung too big on him as if he had recently lost a lot of weight.

“The King,” he was babbling. “I need to see the King. Darkness all around. A little further…I must get to him.” Holding his head, he cried out, “It hurts! Need to find a healer. Can’t… can’t remember.”

Sophia’s mother said in concern, “He’s been like this since I found him stumbling in the road. I brought him home.” She placed before him a bowl of beef broth. He spooned it absently. She got the guest room ready while he finished and afterward put him to bed.

“What’s wrong with him, Mama?” Sophia asked, when she came back to the kitchen.

“I’m not sure, Sophie,” she answered. “He seems to be broken somehow. Will you help me take care of him until he is better?”

“Sure,” said Sophia.

At first he drank only clear soup and slept. But at the end of the week he sat out on the porch in the sun, wrapped in a blanket.

“Hello,” said Sophia, sitting next to him on the porch swing. “What’s your name?”

“I…” He shook his head in confusion. “I don’t know,” he said.

After that she often sat with him. They played checkers. He asked her to read The Letters to him, which always seemed to calm him. She looked forward to seeing him after school. They became special friends and she named him Uncle David.

One evening he cried out, “O my son! My son, my son!”

Sophia leaned over and took his hand in hers. “Uncle David, what is it?“

“He—is hurt, I think. Where is he? Why isn’t he with me?” he said in growing agitation. “My son! I will always, always love my son. The day he was born he could fit in one hand. I still feel him pressed in my palm. He’s my little boy. He is suffering.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I can’t remember. I can’t remember!”

That night Sophia walked to the river, where the rising moon glistened on the water. She spoke aloud, “Maker, please help Uncle David. He needs a healer.”

But she felt the Maker say, “Why are you fighting me?”

“How am I fighting you?” she asked in surprise.

“You cry out for the boy who hurt your cousin to be punished. I want to show him mercy. Why should I answer your prayer?”

“Uncle David needs you! He’s my friend. He’s hurt!” She burst into tears. “Please help him, Maker.”

“Release me to bless the one who hurt you.”

She tensed as she thought back to her anger. But her desire for revenge seemed small and ugly next to the compassion she saw in Uncle David and the Maker. She was tired of the burden of it. She blew out her breath and sniffled.

“I do,” she said and immediately felt a heat radiating from her heart that burned up the bitterness and left a deep peace.

“It is done,” he said.

“And then I felt him say,” concluded Sophia, “‘Now, my love, go seek the healer.’”

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Walker Tale #12 An Unexpected Turn

Posted on September 3, 2023 by lettersfromheartscontent

It was late and the sacred fire was just a glow among the coals. People in the group bent over the fire with their open ember box in hand and swept a coal into it before putting it in their bags.

Priscilla said, “Use the lid to sweep a coal into your box.” Walker and Sophia gathered their embers. When they were done there was an extra. “That’s never happened before,” said Priscilla. “Take that one, too.”

The moon shone peacefully over the desert. Walker and Sophia were too excited to sleep, so Priscilla and Timothy invited them to sit in the dark a while longer.

Timothy spoke for the first time. “You said the mayor told you that heroes live at King’s court. He said the King makes heroes only of the best people and trains them there. They sent you to take a message. But he had it wrong, my friend. That’s not the truth. The truth is the King makes heroes of ordinary people. He trains them along the way. He doesn’t choose the strong and mighty. He often picks the small and weak to do his work. He makes us strong with his strength. You are the one to bring back the fire.”

Walker protested, “But I’m just the messenger!” He hesitated and then spoke haltingly. “I am…afraid of disobeying the King. They asked for a messenger, not a hero. And I’m not a hero! The town is afraid of the Grey Wolf’s army and I know I can’t fight off wolves. That is hero-work.”

Priscilla asked, “Walker, did you get your job from the King or from the people? Do you remember?”

Walker thought back. He remembered that the messages in his heart were, “You go.” “Take what you find in your bag.” “I will guide you along the way.”

“The people sent me to get a hero,” he said finally. “But the King just told me to go. To follow the road. He didn’t say where. I just assumed it was to do what the mayor said.”

Timothy nodded. He said, “It’s late. You don’t need to decide tonight. Sleep on it and let’s talk in the morning.”

They led him and Sophia to their wagon and gave them padding and blankets. They camped under the stars. Sophia dropped right off to sleep but Walker lay awake.

Finally, he fell into a dream in which he saw himself as a mountain goat going nimbly up a cliff, on tiny hooves, finding cracks as he climbed. When he reached the peak he changed. Now he was an eagle flying over the treetops until he found a clearing in the woods, where one woman stood, watching for him. He landed in her outstretched hand. She carried him to a fire-ring where five lonely gray coals lay, not touching. She threw him in and he saw he had become a glowing ember. He landed in the very center and his heat caused the others to leap into flame.

He woke and rubbed his eyes. He looked above at the dark blue sky lit with stars and said as he had in Cold River, “Here I am. Send me.” He rolled over and fell asleep.

The next morning, before he left his warm blanket roll, he read The Letters. One page had this phrase: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” That felt important to him.

Arthur and Jenny made a hearty breakfast for all. After they ate, the company outfitted him with food for his journey to Cold River. To his surprise, his haversack gave two things: one was a strong belt around his waist which had a spot for him to hang his sword. The other was a pair of amazing shoes. They were light and fit like socks but had strong soles that would help him grip cracks in the rock as he climbed back up the rocky mountain trail.

Finally, he was ready. He went to find Sophia.

“Sophia,” he said. “Ready to go?”

“Oh Walker,” she said. “I’m not going.”

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