Shall I tell you......

A few days before my birthday I received at phone call at work from my childhood friend, William. He is one third of the inspiration for William in The Pastor's Ex-Wife - the bachelor retiring elementary school principal to whom Terry Soldan flees for refuge from her abusive husband and soon to be ex, Pastor Ed. We (the real William and I) chit chatted about our children - mine grown, his entering the teen years, and about friends from grade school. Our conversation refocused me on this blog, on my decision to really work on writing no matter how exhausting it is to lead the transition of a static historic house museum to a vibrant living history excursion that takes our visitors back to experience French colonial America in the mid-Mississippi valley as it was.
I identified my core or long-term aspirations recently. You see, I am also at a transition - the kids are grown and gone. I am being successful at what I do for a regular paycheck and I love my job which I hope to keep for a long time. But what I want as my legacy is to be known as a writer of compelling fiction. That is also my retirement plan so another birthday accentuates the reality that I am fewer than 10 years from retirement age. Ouch.
I have already proven that I can make a living as a freelance writer - I've been paid to write in many different genres, for different audiences and purposes. I write daily as part of my job at the museum too - web content, social media posts, articles, business letters, grant proposals, newsletters, brochures, curriculum, advertising - but my real goal is to build an audience for my fiction- which deals with the juxtaposition of authentic faith in abusive marriages. You already know about Pastor's Ex-Wife. Should I tell you about the other novels that are in various stages of completion?

A Sane Man in a Mad World

In his book of essays, "Orthodoxy", G.K. Chesterton wrote: ...new novels die so quickly, and ...old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the center is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world...."

For women married to men who are religious bullies like the Pastor Ed to whom the fictional Terry Soldan was married, the very real torment is about sanity. It takes a faithful friend to look such a wounded woman in the eyes and declare that yes, she is sane. This healing word contradicts every message that her God-fraudulent husband has sent over the course of the whole premarital, nuptial, and marital unbliss. It probably also counters the default self-doubt, Christians must die (to themselves) thinking that has kept her in the marriage boistered by bunches of somewhat mis-applied but well-intended Bible verses that she has beaten herself with after being bloodied by the ones her husband levied against her first.

For women who are married to abusive clergymen, the "mad world" that Chesterton referenced is the church itself and the sane man is the God-less William who offers sanctuary, not asylum, to his childhood friend so she can heal.

Again, while the novel is not autobiographical, and while it most certainly is a fictional construct, I promise that I understand both G.K. Chesterton's allusions and Terry's choices.

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.