Jots and Tittles

Ten years ago this week, my first children’s book, Donovon’s Rainbow, was published. The publisher distributed the book to all of their Vineyard Bookshops worldwide. However, if I wanted it in other bookshops, I was responsible for the distribution. So I duly got on the phone and started doing the rounds.

I got in touch with a bookshop attached to a large church in Cape Town. They requested a review copy. When I phoned them a week later to ask if they wanted to order it, they tersely told me that they would not stock anything that was unbiblical. Shocked, I asked what they meant. Donovon is the fictionalised ‘back story’ of the dove who finds dry land for Noah. Although my starting point was the bible story the rest of the tale was obviously made up. I mean, it wasn’t as if the dove kept a journal of his travels to pass on to future generations.

But this was not acceptable to the managers of this shop. According to them I was ‘distorting the bible’ and leading people into deception. A specific example they cited was that in my story Donovon, who at first refuses to get onto the Ark because he doesn’t approve of the Creator’s plan to destroy the earth, is rescued from the waves after crying out for help. He says that he’s sorry and begs for a second chance. Noah then sends Terence the Tiger overboard to rescue Donovon. This was the ultimate sin, according to these managers, because the door of the Ark should have been firmly closed and no one given a second chance. This, in their opinion, is what happens to us when we die and we have not made a ‘decision for Christ’ beforehand.

Now, as I come from a Baptist background, I understood the theology behind what they were saying. However, did it really matter in this case? Couldn’t they look beyond those details and see the greater truth of the story? Apparently not. I can’t tell you how upset I was at being labelled a heretic. (Little did I know at the time I would have to get used to it!). After a bucket-load of tears and agonised prayers, I was no clearer as to why it had all happened.

That evening I received a phone call from a woman who ran a ministry to adults who had been sexually abused as children. She said she was calling to tell me that my little book had ‘set someone free’. In the story there is a Bird of Paradise called Pumla who is kept in a cage in the depths of the Ark. The evil Ronald Raven tries to convince Donovon that this is evidence that the Creator and his captain Noah are not trying to save them but to imprison them all. However, what Donovon doesn’t notice is that the door to Pumla’s cage is open and she remains there by choice because she is too scared to fly.

My friend, a Christian, read this story to her support group that afternoon. One woman was so touched that she had a massive emotional and spiritual breakthrough and, in my friend’s words, was ‘set free’. I asked my friend where she held her support group. You could have knocked me down with a feather when she named the very church to which the bookshop that had condemned me as a heretic that very morning was attached.



How much freedom writers should have in interpreting bible stories is a controversial issue. I’m coming up against it again with my new series of picture books based on the childhood of King David. But whether I am really a heretic or this is just a matter of jots and tittles, I know one thing: the truth will set people free.

Formerly a journalist, Fiona Veitch Smith is a writer of books, theatre plays and screenplays. Her first adult novel, The Peace Garden, is a romantic thriller set in England and South Africa. It is available as an e-book. Her Young David children’s picture book series is available online from her website and in selected bookshops in the UK. She also writes devotional material for CWR. She is a member of the British Society of Authors and her full list of published books, including ghostwritten works, can be seen here. She lives with her husband, daughter and two dogs in Newcastle upon Tyne where she lectures in media and scriptwriting at the local universities.