THYME BOOKSTORE â—½ TIPS
Free at Last is my latest novel, but it’s the one I needed to write most of all.
I actually started writing this book before I wrote Game Set Love, the book I published before it, but my mind wasn’t centered and I couldn’t get the story right, so I put it to the side for a while. Yet after writing Game Set Love, my mind kept wandering to Free at Last, and I knew I needed to go back to it. I actually started over with a fresh new page, back at the beginning, praying that God would direct me as I wrote this story.
I have to be honest, it ended up a lot different than what I’d originally imagined, but it’s so much more than I ever thought it could be.
The story follows Kallie, a young woman who’s spent most of her life hiding in Witness Protection. She desperately wants to be free, so she decides to venture out and create a life of her own. But the darkness from her past follows her into her new life, making it harder than she thought to start over. Making things even more complicated, she runs into Milo, an old friend from before she went into hiding. He doesn’t recognize her, and she’s too scared to tell him who she really is. They start spending time together and their feelings grow into romance, but Kallie can’t fully open her heart because half of her is still stuck in the past. She struggles with self-harm and fears she’ll never be able to shed her chains and step out of the shadows.
But Milo has something Kallie doesn’t have – he knows Jesus. His life is evidence of the greatest love of all, and he’s determined to share that love with Kallie, especially once he finds out who she is. But he can’t make the decision for her. Kallie has to find her own faith if she truly wants freedom from her pain.
I wrote this book for anyone who’s ever felt lost or broken. I want them to know that they are loved beyond measure and that no one is beyond repair.
I also wrote this book for myself. It was a healing process. I shed so many tears while writing it, but it helped me to find closure and peace in some of the hurting parts of my heart. Some important relationships in my life are very broken, and I don’t know if they’ll ever be reconciled. So part of my purpose in writing Free at Last was to put my heart on paper. To make my story relatable to someone else, someone who may be hurting too. It’s not technically my real story, because I made it up. But pieces of it are pieces of me, and putting them into this book helped me move on. It helped remind me that God is enough. I am loved and treasured by Him, and I am never truly alone.
I hope that this book can touch even one person’s heart and remind them of those truths. Because if Kallie’s story taught me anything, it’s that shining His light does matter. There are lost and broken people in this world, and they need someone to show them what love is really about. In a nutshell, that’s why I wrote this book. And I hope it glorifies Jesus, my Savior, my entire reason for writing. The One who loves me no matter what.
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