The Disciplined Writer

I wrote today - a one page promo for the historic sites in Ste. Genevieve for a group of us to pick apart and refine; rewrote parts of the edited draft of the quarterly newsletter for the Museum; wrote a bunch of emails; wrote website content; updated posts via Roost for social media sites; and created additional content in the persona of Zuts the Squirrel a.k.a (per one of my sisters) my alter ego and Museum mascot. Probably I wrote more things than that. It's a usual day so why do I think I haven't made any progress on my goal of becoming known as a writer of significant fiction? Hmmm.....

Rabbi David Small

I like (and have just recently discovered) Harry Kemelman's series of "cozy" mysteries solved by Rabbi David Small by applying the methodology of a talmudic scholar. I like them because the author is more concerned about issues of faith and what it means to be an authentic practicing Jew in the New England of the 1960s than about writing a murder mystery. The mystery, always tightly composed, is incidental to the impact of the story but it serves a sneaky device that keeps the reader engaged and provokes new questions of faith and conscience along the way.

If I succeed in my life-long ambition to become known as a writer of serious fiction I will have engaged my readers around the same types of issues as Kemelman. I aim to provoke honest faith by triggering deep questions in my readers all the while providing a compelling story that doesn't let them put the Kindle down until the last page has been swiped.

Hopefully my readers will respect my characters in spite of all of their flaws as much as I respect the Rabbi.

Selective Memory

I picked up an old book by Hallie and Whit Burnett, Fiction Writer's Handbook, at the library. It starts with a preface by Norman Mailer and it's been a while since I've read a book on the craft. It is very well done - more about the philosophy behind the writing process than most books with similar titles and goals. The authors take a wide view because as the editors of Story Magazine, they had a large and diverse number of examples to choose from.

One statement matches my process in writing Pastor's Ex-Wife well: "We absorb, we sympathize, we reject, we present, it all comes from our own selective memory in the end."

And so it does in my story of how one woman, Terry Soldan, achieved enough personal courage to return to the church pastored by her ex-husband, incognito, in order to shut the door on that abusive season so that she could step into a new place emotionally.

Who's William?

There were 13 students in my kindergarten class at a Lutheran school in New York City. William was the new kid in first grade who cried when his sister was born because he already had a sister and had wanted a brother. He also threw up on my desk. We became very close friends. He gave me permission to use his name for the William of my novel, Pastor's Ex-Wife. Now he is a successful ob-gyn. The fictitious William is an elementary principal in an inner city school district. In fact he, like most everything else in the book is a fictional construct made up of three men who have loved me well: William, Mike (a real principal), and my dad - the inspiration behind the fictitious William's passion for gourmet cooking. His passion for gardening is from me. In all, William represents all the positives in contrast to Pastor Ed who is the villain.

What do you notice when you walk into a church for the first time?

Last Saturday I went with some friends to hear a Christmas concert at a church because they had seen one of the soloists in a different performance context so when they heard a radio advertisement for this concert they thought it would be good. It was very good.

But as we pushed my friend's husband's wheelchair up the ramp that "could not have been designed for a handicapped person in mind because it is too steep" I remembered the crazy idea that became the novel, Pastor's Ex-Wife.

We were greeted nicely, not intrusively, at the door by a security guard and directed to the elevator to go DOWN to the sanctuary. After we got down we learned that the only restroom facilities are UP. So, I hung out in the large hall browsing the items on display tables and bulletin boards until my friends returned. We were escorted thanks to the wheelchair to a back row where we sat next to a woman who smiled nicely enough and had too much perfume on.

In the novel, Terry Soldan, the ex-wife of the abusive Pastor Ed, becomes an anonymous church critic. She travels incognito, disguised as a woman of color, to a different church each week. Then she writes her experience up as an article in the paper where she is the religion editor. Had Terry been at this concert she would not have been the only black woman there and she would also have enjoyed the mix of classical and jazz performance and the additional congregational worship led by an amazing musician from Malta.

The whole idea of an anonymous church critic came about when I decided that people looking for a church should be able to preview it before stepping inside. Other than the website or the service on local-access television or the radio, a potential visitor has to risk being hugged, snubbed, judged, cajoled, healed, saved, baptized, or bored once they decide to attend on a Sunday morning.

It's sad that walking into a church can be that threatening.

Last week's concert was excellent and the church looked like the "word of faith" church it promotes itself to be.

Glimpsing Jesus?

I got invited to return to Haiti next spring to attend and possibly speak at a Christian women's conference there. Why? Because, like my friend who shares a similar story of broken marriage and single mothering but who has remarried and travels the world with her missionary husband now, I have not always been perfect. Apparently that is a refreshing message for women in the churches around the world.

How tragic that we Christians have so twisted the message of redemption that we presume to be so perfect that we don't need a Savior anymore. How ridiculous that in our spiritual arrogance we miss the fact that many people just find us funny.

It is this sham along with the buy-in that is so prevalent among some of the most vocal and influential church leaders (like Pastor Ed and his congregation in the novel, Pastor's Ex-Wife) that makes so many people dismiss Christianity as worthless.

My hope is that by creating a fictional romp through the spectrum of American Protestantism today I have written a tragic-comedy that will perhaps provoke a reexamination of my readers' opinions.

Perhaps my readers will find themselves laughing in spite of pain and in the midst of cynicism.

Perhaps my readers can look up with fresh eyes, not yet seeing everything under his feet yet.

Perhaps - maybe for the first time, a few readers may glimpse

Jesus.

Enough

Sometimes things go terribly not the way you planned. Like today. I got to work early because a repairman was coming to fix the printer. He came. Then a few hours later when the paper smelled and looked like roasted marshmallows in the historic house built circa 1820 where our museum offices are located. In the meantime not much of what I had on my to do list was finished - it could have been if the printer had worked...Then the staffing fell apart for the weekend. Again, not my fault but my problem. Enough of these little things built up that by 2:30 I left work - no explanations - just "if you need me I'll come back." Granted, I am the director and I did work on both of my days off this week and now that the weekend staffing changed I'll put in at least a 20 hour one....so the dog and I went to the river where there were a large number of barges herded together at the bank chaperoned by one big river boat. But it was enough of a breather to somewhat calm my exasperation for a few minutes. Water does that - still waters....He leads me beside the still waters....

These are slight challenges compared to the pressure that builds in an abusive marriage over many decades sometimes. At some point someone just has had enough.

For the fictitious pastor's ex-wife in my novel, enough was when the last child graduated from high school and the still waters were at William's house, Terry's refuge from all of the church hurt that made everything that much more confusing because she couldn't untwist the lies about God enough to get a peek at His truth...pain does that.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

Popcorn and Parmesan Cheese with Butter & Dillweed

A recipe to temporarily forestall loneliness and other sadness is fresh popped popcorn covered with real melted butter, dill weed, salt, and Parmesan cheese...it only works until the bowl is licked clean of the butter.

Only once did emotional discomfort stop me from eating altogether. It was when the last lie shattered everything and my heart broke like a shattered plate into a million little pieces on the floor. Thank God for the friend who forced me, a week or so later, to eat some cheese. The crisis had been faced but at that particular time, no solution seemed evident...

Terry Soldan, the fictitious ex-wife of Pastor Ed, had a similar experience. Her friend was William, whose reputation as a gourmet chef was as well known as his wonderful garden. You can read about their unusual relationship in the novel, Pastor's Ex-Wife - now available for sale as a Kindle e-book.

once upon a time....

Christmas is over-rated. The current barrage of gift-driven commercials began the minute Santa Claus stepped off his sleigh at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade last Thursday morning. Black Friday began before Friday started and then cyber Monday came and went. Both shopping days were disappointments according to my sources. I've never participated in either one.

Indeed, being a single mother of many children made Christmas worse especially because well-meaning individuals made assumptions that I could not afford to provide a "good" Christmas to the children so they stepped in unasked with lavish gifts that overpowered the simple ones I did wrap.

On the inside, jealousy wrestled with gratitude every year...even with grown children today I struggle with inadequacy - call me Scrooge if you must.

Christmas involved grief and cruelty for Terry Soldan too. She is the main character in my novel, Pastor's Ex-Wife. Christmas stung Terry because her ex-husband, Pastor Ed, used it as an attempt to assert his power against her, exacerbating his less than innocent ability to block her from her children and grandchildren.

If only we could each be delighted in the simple things that drop from on high feather-like unasked at our feet.

Once upon a time long ago and far away the best gift lay swaddled in a manger....I wonder....

Is it really necessary to be right?

A long-time Christian moved to a new town and for about a year attended a small church without becoming a member while making relationship and contributing to the life of the congregation. Largely because of the demands of a new but necessary job, she missed several Sundays in a row. Her friends told her that the pastor's wife wondered whether this woman had "fallen out of fellowship" and that the pastor was going to visit her to find out. No one called. No one bothered to ask her before the judgments, based on arrogant assumptions, flew like gossip throughout the congregation. The woman came to me extremely wounded asking advice about how to respond. Her first instinct was never to return to the church.

Unfortunately, I have encountered this situation far too many times - sometimes being the focus of the accusations (more than once).

It was this type of spiritual pride that Terry Soldan, the fictitious ex-wife of a pastor in my novel, Pastor's Ex-Wife (available on Amazon for the Kindle, btw), banked on when she left Pastor Ed and ran to her childhood bachelor friend's home. She correctly predicted that Ed and his board of elders and every other member of his congregation would immediately assume that she and William were having an affair and that, therefore, Ed had biblical grounds for a divorce. In addition, Terry would be ex-communicated, anathema, unless she confessed her sin and repented.

Some readers have asked whether it is really plausible for Terry to live in William's house without being sexually involved with him. Other readers will understand that it makes a great deal of sense because they will have lived Terry's life and resonate with her woundedness sharing her understandings.... Unfortunately for the church, William's genuine commitment and hospitality to his traumatized friend brought Terry more normalcy and healing than anything else.

Is it really so necessary to be right? Isn't our own righteousness nothing more than a used tampon according to Isaiah? It doesn't take too long for that to stink.

Loneliness among friends

This is the end of Thanksgiving weekend for 2011 - a time that often finds us surrounded by family retelling the shared stories that make up the fabric of our lives. I did see some family on Thursday at a nursing home where a man, my former father-in-law, whom I have loved for 35 years or more, is fading away - all his concentration was spent trying to move his food from his plate to his mouth...he missed all the stories and we missed the ones he relentlessly tells every year. Most likely I unwittingly started a new story when I made a serious mistake while knitting a Christmas stocking for my son's intended...Of course this happened when I was surrounded by the other women with whom I have spent hours knitting, chatting, and chasing children over the years...it's a tradition among us (we're four generations into it) to knit Christmas stockings for the new members of the family. Windy knit the same exact pattern for each of her grandchildren. Grandmommy continued the tradition - varying the pattern a bit - so each of my children has a stocking she created. Since I have never been able to discipline myself to repeat a recipe or a design without some variation, I changed everything - knitting in the design instead of embroidering it, etc. But every stocking still needs a heel turned, a foot added, and a toe. What did I do in such a public setting to inspire a new story? I knit the heel but forgot to turn it before I picked up all the stitches on the double pointed needles all the while ignoring the little voice inside that kept saying something just did not feel right. "So, you are knitting a tube sock stocking!" was the conclusion of my sister in law who was knitting on the seat next to me. Rather than try to fix my mistake while I was still embarrassed by it - even though it was pretty funny...I put the whole thing back in the bag and ate another piece of pie. Soon I returned home which took over an hour of driving and when I got here it was a lonely finish to a melancholic but meaningful day. I've spent quite a few holidays without family since my marriage failed but I have only been shunned by one or two individuals. Terry Soldan in Pastor's Ex-Wife faced the same loneliness among friends but she was overtly shunned even by her own children. Hopefully the humor I wove throughout that novel makes a good contrast to the pain it paints.

Dead Butterfly Wings

My friend, Lisa and her husband, Gavin, were the first readers of Pastor's Ex-Wife. I emailed them a chapter every few days as soon as the first (but not the roughest first) draft was written. They responded with questions, things I needed to clarify, and they shared the emotions the story provoked in them. It made the writing process more real for me to have an audience whose questions often inspired the next chapter as it unfolded.

Oh, yes, I had an outline - really a plan, not an outline. I work best when I have determined certain requirements for each chapter - it had to move the plot forward, it had to include humor, it had to turn around a single unifying metaphor, it had to employ similes and a full range of sensory details....dialogue... an anecdote from my years teaching in an inner city school district, as well as a church building, a pastor, a congregation, a service and sermon.

I mixed and matched the church features like a crazy quilt - everything is based on reality but abstracted like a cubist painting to create a new fictional construct of a church that worked with the story.

I did not realize how important Lisa and Gavin had been to the writing process until last night.

I am working on a new novel (working title "Dead Butterfly Wings"). It is set in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and is a murder mystery which also treats the theme I dedicate my adult fiction to explore: authentic faith within abusive families.

Lisa and Gavin were my first audience for this first novel - Pastor's Ex-Wife. Lisa shared the background of the protagonist and pastor's ex-wife, Terry Soldan, so her emotional reactions predicted to me whether the story felt real, authentic, plausible....

Until yesterday, I did not have an audience in mind for "Dead Butterfly Wings." Now I do - a person to whom the book just may be dedicated. It won't be the same. I won't be showing him the chapters as they get written but I am writing as if I were telling him the story as it unfolds on the page. I don't even know whether he will ever read it. But, I learned a tremendous thing about how I write just by realizing that I am writing FOR someone specific. It motivates me to put my heart on the page more fully.

Thank you, Lisa and Gavin.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

Offered Heart

I was admiring the hand-built ceramics made using Native American techniques and inspiration by the students at our museum yesterday (my day job is to direct the Bolduc House Museum in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri). One bowl was inspired by a Mississippi Mound Builder's sacrificial heart vessel. Its maker explained that the heart would be cut out of a sacrificial victim, placed in the bowl, the victim's corpse kicked away, and the heart lifted to the deity in the bowl.
The idea wounded my spirit.
Then I pondered it some more.
The essence of worship is just that: to offer one's whole heart up to the Lord.
The essence of spiritual abuse such as I portray coming from Pastor Ed towards his ex-wife, Terry Soldan, in the novel, Pastor's Ex-Wife, is to cut out and offer another person's heart up to God.
Terry's problem after she left her abusive pastor husband was to regain and reclaim her own heart. That accomplished, she may someday decide to yield it back without reservation to the Lord - perhaps the next story.....

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

God is blurry

The biggest loss that Terry Soldan suffered when she left her abusive husband, Pastor Ed, after decades of marriage was the rift her decision created between her and her two adult children. She did not explain the details of her reasoning to them - she did not have the luxury of an opportunity prior to leaving Ed. After she left, like many of the people in the congregation she had helped to lead for so many years, her children took Ed's side without even investigating hers. Ed successfully branded himself as God's man of faith and power who had been dealt a huge injustice by his unrepentant rebellious wife. His ego became inflated by a standard but not careful interpretation of a verse in Malachi that says that God hates divorce. Most people stop there. When you read the verse in its context it sharpens the meaning a lot and divorce appears to be a natural consequence of actions suffered within a marriage especially by a wife. Knowing ahead of time that this would be the message served up week after week from Ed's pulpit against her actions, Terry realized that her choice to walk away would be ever so costly. How much pain did that indicate was her daily marital dose?
Sadly, Terry is a fictional construct of the stories of many women in pain whose decisions cause even more pain - sometimes because of misplaced accusations that come against them; sometimes because of their own desperate but negative actions. Usually God is blurry and His image superimposed on the pain at the point of the deepest crisis. Let God arise for every Terry who needs His wisdom and courage!


You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

Then with my outside voice I said.....

One very honest friend vented about a difficult person she had dealt with during the day by detailing what she said - "I told her to take her pretty little skinny self and blankety blank blank...."

It surprised me to hear the diatribe because this friend never does or says anything mean or even remotely harsh to or about anyone.

Then she paused...."Then," she continued, "with my outside voice I....." said something much nicer indeed.

I laughed, delighted at the truth she had revealed through this clever device of humor.

We all have inside voices and sometimes they need to speak louder.

For Terry Soldan, the ex-wife of the abusive Pastor Ed, her inside voice was gagged for the entire time she was married to him mostly because she had a warped understanding of how a Christian wife is supposed to behave towards her husband. His power over her snapped and she broke free when that inside voice insisted that the outside voice stop pretending.

That caused the identity crisis that ended up being a crisis of faith and a leap of faith that took a whole lot of courage and caused a whole lot of pain.

Hopefully the readers of Pastor's Ex-Wife will find the humor as refreshing as I found my friend's.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

Feliz Cumpleanos

My friend's daughter is turning 15 next week. I remember when the little baby arrived fresh from the adoption agency just a few days old, the joy at having a brown baby girl to round out the mixed family before the hidden abuses became too severe to hide anymore and the family ruptured irrevocably.

It was a shock that I was privy to long before it became public when the stigma grew so loud that none of the parties could safely remain associated to the church community that had nurtured them and vowed before God and these witnesses to pray for them and to hold them accountable to their own marriage vows. As if knowing God was enough to prevent adultery, incest, and abuse - think of King David as a single example of a man whose very public worship life didn't keep him from having to face all of those issues very publicly...

As a people of faith, don't we routinely violate the principles of the God we proclaim and doesn't that muddy the waters of every on-looker who is desperate to find answers, truth, justice, acceptance, forgiveness, healing and the space in which to be him or herself?

When I attend the celebration of this girl's birthday I will remember the first time I held her knowing that with very few exceptions, I am one person who connects to that painful time with love. I wonder whether she will remember her Creator with gratitude or whether her view of Him is distorted through the lens of her losses so that she has yet to sense His pleasure.

Terry Soldan, the fictitious Pastor's Ex-Wife, lived through the juxtaposition of authentic faith in a loving God and an abusive family, let the sham break into a million pieces and began again - limping with the help of some unlikely friends - towards a normal life. Her two children suffered too but have yet to bump head on into the fact that sin twists our perspectives and that abusive but forceful religiosity laces the twist with all kinds of poison dipped barbs. Maybe someday in some sequel they will have the courage to examine their mother's side of the story.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

Lie Dissectors

The last post I uploaded, "Have you been hurt by the church?" has triggered the most interest so far of any. For Terry, the pastor's ex-wife in the story, church and her ex-husband, Ed, were barely distinguishable from each other. At least that was true for a long time while she came to terms with who she was and how she wanted to live. Over and over again, for Terry, it meant drawing a separation between Ed and God and discovering that she had allowed Ed to become the lens through which she viewed God. I know I personally have been guilty of the same mind games - probably that is why I was able to portray Terry so. She doesn't quite know this about herself at the end of the book but she has also allowed the people of Ed's church to come to define THE church for her - even though they have not applied enough critical thinking either and basically function as Ed's abusive echo. Of course, idolizing the pastor, the elders, or a denomination leads to the kind of inflexibility and judgmental-ism that ostracized Terry without even considering that there might have been another way to evaluate the situation. How hurtful to learn that the basis of one's community, identity, and barometer of truth and morals has shut you out! How freeing truth inevitably is if we allow it to dissect us away from these lies. It reminds me of Job and that makes me confident that people like Terry really do get the chance to come face to face with the God who speaks out of the whirlwind in His own time and with His own set of challenging questions. 


You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

Have you been hurt by a church?

I was driving this afternoon listening to the radio not finding the store I was looking for when I heard Rickie Lee Jones interviewed on the Studio 360 program and enjoyed hearing her sing a few songs from her newest album. Two of the songs have titles that refer to biblical language so the interviewer asked if she was moving towards Christianity. While she said that she "likes Jesus" and likes what He said "but he didn't say very much" according to her, she does not "like" most Christians nor does she respect any "fundamentalist" religion where the adherents are expected to do a specific series of things just for believing in the guy who started it.

Lots of people are caught in this dilemma. They "like" Jesus but find a mismatch between what He seems to stand for and what His people represent. So they avoid Him along with the religion that has grown up around His various followers making little distinction between them. Probably this is a clue that should be interpreted to mean that they (the people who "like" but do not follow Jesus) have been severely wounded by the church in the name of Jesus - like what happened to our fictitious protagonist, Terry, when her ex-husband, Pastor Ed, accused her of all manner of theological anathema as a way to mask his own abusive behavior and the congregation, who idolized their member of the clergy as many have elevated a saint or pope in other religious contexts, bought the lie and rejected Terry who was actually the innocent used to be ingenue victim.

She, licking her own wounds while coming to grips with how long she had been the prisoner of an ego maniacal misogynist, could have ended up with Rickie Lee Jones' confession. However, largely due to her role as the Anonymous Church Critic for the local newspaper, she began to appreciate the many stripes of the American Protestant church and to become a discriminating consumer of what is demanded of the members of their congregations from the mostly men who occupy their various pulpits on Sunday mornings.

Have you suffered hurt at the hands of Christians, clergy, or the church? Perhaps, like many who have read the novel, Pastor's Ex-Wife, it will begin to lance the wound in your heart and start you laughing down a path towards and authentic faith that comes from gut-wrenching honesty met by NO pat-answers.....Besides, the book could also make a great mind-movie until someone decides to buy the movie rights to it from me and turn it into a block-buster. (I am not kidding, by the way.)


You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

Philandering

The daily news stories - not just the tabloids- are replete with evidence of powerful men or men with power who forget that they will someday have to give an account for every word and deed who disregard the vows they swore in the presence of God and these witnesses to be faithful to the wives of their youth. Isn't it commonly said that power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely? This may be the explanation of the indiscretions of the recent governor of California; the horrible triple murder case where the head of security for a nationally known ministry killed his wife and two sons to keep his mistress without compromising his job; and the widespread clergy sex-abuse crisis in the American Catholic and Protestant churches. The reason I wrote "Pastor's Ex-Wife" was to expose this common abuse of power to the gullible women who suffer too long too often in secret thinking that they are to blame for their misery when probably they were made vulnerable by some earlier series of abuses or negligence that created in them a kind of black hole craving for the affection of any man who knew enough to groom his victim before revealing the inner monster....


You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.  

Andersonville

Andersonville, Georgia, is the location of one of the largest Civil War prison camps and now boasts a museum dedicated to American Prisoners of War.There is a fabulous movie where POWs from every American War comment on film or their journals are read aloud - each provides information on a variety of topics: deprivation, torture, capture, release, communication, food....The popular opinion of these POWs is that their fellow captives who gave in to self-pity and lost the hope of being restored to their families are the ones who did not survive the ordeal. I believe this holds true for women who find themselves victims of abuse AND once released from the captivity, the paradigm, focus, and imagination MUST shift to a new set of objectives, hopes, and futures.

Of course, there is also a period of transition that must be experienced and it is that - when a renewed and refocused identity emerges - that I have tried to illustrate in Terry's story. With the help of William, she gains perspective, courage, and purpose in her new life as the ex-wife of the pastor. It does not mean the end of her pain either.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.