Bookish Tuesday: Cradle Snatchers by Henry Brooks

by LeAnne Hardy | @ICFWriters

From time to time I have the opportunity to participate in the creation of quality Christian literature by being a beta reader for a colleague or editing for a client. One such book was Cradle Snatchers, the latest in British author Henry Brooks’ Will Houston mystery series and definitely his best so far. Brooks is an enthusiastic young father with seemingly boundless energy and creativity. He has a sharp mind and is eager to use story to communicate ideas he feels very passionate about. I’m usually pretty impatient with agenda-driven fiction even when I agree with the agenda, but in Cradle Snatchers Brooks has given us fast-paced action and laugh-out-loud characters that slam home his human-life agenda with gut-punching force.

It is difficult to talk about this book without giving away a bit of the plot so *spoiler alert* the theme is abortion in the UK and the world. Early on a young woman has a seizure while burying an infant corpse in Hyde Park—with a clump of daffodil bulbs. “We don’t plant daffodil bulbs,” says the park maintenance man. I will never look at daffodils the same again. In Cradle Snatchers the daffodils that blanket Hyde Park and beyond represent more than six million abortions to date. Brooks draws readers in with horror and righteous anger over dead babies and then points a finger like the prophet Nathan: Thou art the man! In the end, he will floor you with the facts and the heart-stopping decadence of modern society. He puts a human face on what his character calls “the defining issue of the age”.

Brooks is a Brit. He is not writing to American sensibilities. There is language in this book. There is violence. The characters drink alcohol. Catholic/Protestant animosities play a part, and for a while it almost sounds like Dan Brown’s anti-Catholic DaVinci Code, but nothing is inappropriate to the context, and the story packs a punch. I think this book will find an audience in the pro-life community and among teens, especially older boys. I am proud to have had a part in producing it.

I recently interviewed Brooks on the writing of Cradle Snatchers.

LH: Why did you choose a mystery story instead of non-fiction to present your case?

HB: Jesus rarely taught except that he used a parable, a story. Narrative seems to switch something on in our brains and hold our attention better. There are so many excellent books dealing with this debate, but I know teens are not going to read them, so this was my offering for them.

LH: You obviously have a passion for the subject. Have you ever been tempted to behave like your character Gabriel to shake sense into your opponents?

HB: Well, this is very difficult, isn't it? Anger and grief is the correct response and the Bible is not against anger per se, but how we express that is the real question before us. In the Batman Dark Knight movie, the righteous Harvey Dent allowed grief and anger to turn him into the same type of monster he had set out to fight. A lot of my own fiction deals with this. The lessons and tragedies of church history are before us. You cannot fight fire with fire. Jesus could not be clearer on this point: if you live by the sword you will die by it. It is a lot 'easier' and takes considerably less courage to blow up an abortion clinic, than to adopt unwanted children. Christians need to pioneer new, prophetic models of social service, and not just point a self-righteous finger. This debate is almost too polarised and toxic for dialogue, people need to see the Gospel principle in action.

LH: You link issues like abortion and euthanasia, health care and women’s rights. In the book, you make a point of sticking to non-religious arguments. How do you believe these issues are related in the gospel?

HB: This is very simple to answer. It was the same issue at stake in Nazi Germany and the Communist Gulag. And the same issue at stake in the LGBT issue. It is the issue of anthropology—are we made in the image of God or not? If not, then we have no leg to stand on. But if the Imageo Dei is the foundation of human existence, then Christians have the awesome responsibility of saving their post-Christian societies from the catastrophic course on which it has embarked. I cannot state this strongly enough. The Imageo Dei is the bedrock of a free society. We were given a glimpse in the twentieth century of where the materialist view of humanity would take us, but we have not listened. C. S. Lewis' lectures called The Abolition of Man should be read by anyone who thinks I am exaggerating.

LH: What suggested daffodils to you?

HB: We believe in the resurrection, thank God! Not one child aborted will ultimately be missing on that great day. Daffodils are a reminder each year at Easter time that God is faithful and that he has not, and will not, abandon his creation.

LH: What do you have planned next for Will Houston?

HB: There is a fourth book called The Student Jihad which I wrote ten years ago. It deals with issues relating to Islam and Christianity, which is a real button issue in the UK right now. I started to get it ready to send to an editor recently but got bogged down with so many other things that it will have to wait at least 12 months.

LH: I hope we will see some of the same characters we met in Cradle Snatchers who lent humor to an otherwise heavy topic. All the best to you on your current project!

LeAnne Hardy has lived in six countries on four continents as a writer and missionary librarian. Her plots and settings are inspired by these diverse locations. She currently writes and does freelance editing from a lake in the Northwoods of Wisconsin where she and her husband enjoy visitors, especially grandchildren.

North to Alaska!

Early morning hike in Haines Junction, YT

Long ago—back around 1960—I was a child in school when we studied the building of the Alaska-Canada Highway—“Alcan” for short. The idea of driving all the way to Alaska caught my childish imagination, but the road was gravel. You had to carry gas cans and know how to fix your own car if it broke down because there were no services. I am not the least bit mechanically minded, so as an adult I regretfully set aside that dream as unrealistic for me.

Gates can close the road to travel in foul weather.

Fast-forward fifty years. The road is asphalted. There are gas stations every hundred miles or so and finding a mechanic in a time of need is theoretically not impossible. It turns out that driving to Alaska was also a long-time dream of my soon-to-be-ninety-year-old mother-in-law. My husband (no more mechanical than I am) is now officially retired. We could do it, we told ourselves. Why not?

We began talking seriously about it eight months ago. The Alaska Tourism Board was more than happy to send us information. My husband plotted our route and contacted hotels in February. May 20 we left home with a cooler, a camera, and a box of supplies. Twenty-five days and 9,280 miles later, we arrived home, awed and eager to do it again.

In 1942 a recuperating soldier added his hometown
of Danville, IL, to the sign post on Watson Lake in
Yukon Territory. Since then others have followed suit
until it has grown into this "signpost forest".

The Alaska Highway had been talked about since the gold miners headed north in the 1890s. Serious route possibilities were discussed in the 1930s. But it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that pushed the US and Canadian governments to come to an agreement to make the road a reality. Work began in the spring of 1942. In June the Japanese attacked an American base in the Aleutian Islands and demonstrated the importance of an overland supply route for military bases there. More than 16,000 soldiers and civilian engineers bulldozed trees, leveled the ground, and built bridges, ditches and culverts over 1,422 miles of wilderness. At first commanders believed that Americans of African descent would not be able to handle the harsh conditions of the far north (more than 90 degrees in summer and fifty or more below zero in winter). When they finally did send African Americans, they excelled. This miracle of engineering, sometimes compared to the Panama Canal for its scope and coordination, was completed in November of 1942, only eight months after it was begun!

Wildlife like bear and this moose can be seen along the road.

Now, I am a novelist. As we journeyed, I kept imagining the men who built the road, the sweethearts they left behind, the friends and brothers fighting in the Pacific. Most of these men had never been out of the lower 48 before. Most of the locals were used to traveling by dog-sled. What a range of characters! What a range of emotions in those close quarters and harsh conditions! What a setting for Christian fiction! (Note: This is a major hint to my Canadian friends and fellow-bloggers; I really want to read a book about this.)

Our 2015 journey found a two-lane asphalted road, much of it with no shoulder. Some days we met another vehicle about once every ten minutes. "Facilities" were mostly long drops at roadside pullovers. We saw moose and bear, waterfalls, tundra and snow-capped mountains. Although Mom likes to take an arm to steady her these days when she walks, her spirit of adventure is strong. She’s not up to hiking, but she is more than up to riding in a car and oggling out the windows. Every day of the journey was a worship experience, praising our incredible Creator God, a shared adventure none of us will ever forget.

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LeAnne Hardy has lived in six countries on four continents. Her books for young people come out of her cross-cultural experiences and her passion to use story to convey truth. She loves hiking and always wants to know what's around the next corner. You can read a day-by-day log of her Alaska trip (with lots more pictures!) at her new travel blog, Wide-eyed Wanderer, and find out more about her books at her author site, Times and Places.

Books in Unexpected Places

Books. The printed kind with bright coloured covers and dog-eared pages. They are becoming rarer and rarer in my life as the convenience of downloading e-books to my phone directly from Amazon or the library takes over. But there is still something about the real thing calling to me from the coffee table or the nightstand, filling my bookcases with memories of favourites.

My grandchildren’s shelves are overflowing. A few months ago the second grader came down the stairs well after bedtime to confess to her parents that she had been reading by flashlight under the covers after the lights were turned off. Her parents looked at one another. How could they punish their kid for reading too much? She is now permitted to read for ten minutes after the lights are out. She still likes it best under the covers with a flashlight, but at least she doesn’t have to worry about getting caught.

On a recent trip to Korea to visit my other daughter, we took a day’s holiday at Nami Island. It is a cultural centre that celebrates books among other things. Besides the books in every room of our rented hut, his little shelter stood outside with a view of the river.

The playground included this collection of children’s books.

There were even books in the public toilet stall!

I’ve seen little libraries in other places. A red English phone box filled with books stands next to a bakery in Hungary where we stopped for coffee.

On her walks a friend makes the rounds of several free libraries (built by Lions Club) including this one in her own front yard. She scans her shelves at home for things someone else might want to read. Take one/leave one is the rule.

So where have you found books in surprising places? Where would you like to see one of these little libraries set up?
(Google Little Free Libraries to see lots more examples.)

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LeAnne Hardy has lived in six countries on four continents. Her fiction reflects the places she has lived and her passion for sharing stories that reflect truth. Learn more at www.leannehardy.net .

Real and Imagined Dystopias

Even if you haven’t read The Hunger Games, you probably saw the movie or at least heard all the hype about it: teens from the different regions of a future North America are drawn from a lottery to be sent to compete in a reality TV series where they kill each other and the last one alive wins. It’s a fascinating book about the horrors of violence and the gifts of compassion and cooperation. That is book 1. I found book 2 (Catching Fire) needed to augment the violence the author purported to despise in order to hold its audience. Book 3 (Mockingjay) is a cynical twist on just war that ends with hope that cannot be justified apart from the gospel.

The series is part of a popular trend in YA literature—the dystopian novel. Dystopia is the opposite of Utopia (meaning “no place” in Greek). It’s the name Sir Thomas More gave to the idealized community he wrote about in the sixteenth century. Instead of the perfect society imagined by More, a dystopia is a totally dysfunctional society, a horror story where the monsters are human.

I have recently been reading two dystopian series (alternating as my name comes up for the next book on library holds.) The first is the Last Survivors series by Susan Beth Pfeffer, beginning with Life as We Knew It. An asteroid hits the moon, setting off a series of environmental disasters and the collapse of modern civilization. It begins as a pretty ditsy teen novel, which actual provides a strong sense of this-could-happen-to-me to the survival story that follows. It’s enough to make you appreciate a bottle of shampoo and a tin of string beans.

In The Maze Runner series by James Dashner (beginning with The Maze Runner) we are thrust into the dystopian world from page one. I’m on book 3 and still have no idea what is behind it all except that this is some kind of scientific experiment designed to save humanity from a disaster even worse than what the teens trapped in the maze are experiencing. Sounds wacko, as it does to the characters, but the action will definitely keep you reading.

In each of these series, I am completely hooked by book 1. Unlike certain vampire books that were recently the rage, the writing is excellent. But the more I read, the more I find myself thinking, what’s the point? I have never been a fan of horror movies. There is enough really bad stuff in reality. Why do I need to be scared by imaginary axe murderers and walking mummies? (You can tell what generation I come from.)

Can you imagine a society more dystopian that ISIL? Or how about North Korea where starving people are told they are so much better off than the rest of the world? Authors on this blog have written about real dystopias. I think of Kathi Macias's Red Ink or Jeannette Windle’s series on Afghanistan beginning with Unveiled Freedom. Jeanette has other books involving drug cartels that control whole regions of countries.

For me a dystopian novel needs to be more than a series of graphic events that chill and horrify in a society without hope of justice. It needs to show me something about myself or reveal realities that should be on my prayer list (like China or Afghanistan). I admit, that I have had a dystopian idea in my head for several years now. I ask myself, what would be the point?

What dystopian fiction have you read? What made it worthwhile for you? We can expand the conversation to horror if you like. What makes a book like Dracula or Carrie worth reading? Or are they? How would the gospel change The Hunger Games or other dystopian fiction you have read?

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LeAnne Hardy has lived in six countries on four continents, including two civil wars, a military government and an emerging democracy. Along the way she has been challenged to depend on God rather than the American constitution. Her fiction reflects her faith, her passion for storytelling that stretches the mind and soul, and the cultures she has lived in. Learn more at www.leannehardy.net .

NOT International Christian Fiction

Once upon a time in a land far, far away.

Most of our stories don’t begin that way any longer. We start with action or a catchy bit of dialogue. But still, that is what our fiction is—once upon a time. And for those of us who write international fiction, our story may well take place in a land far, far away from our readers, if not from ourselves, the authors.

Luke, the first-century doctor turned biographer and church historian, didn’t begin that way. Saint Luke’s story was true, and he wanted to be sure his readers knew it. He didn’t just choose interesting details to give a realistic feel for time and place. (In fact, I often wish he had included more of those to help me understand the cultural context.) His goal was to “write an orderly account” (Luke 1:3). He must have researched the existing literary sources by those like Mark and Matthew who had “undertaken to draw up an account of the things that [had] been fulfilled among [them]” (Luke 1:1). But lots of other stories had been “handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Luke 1:2).  So Luke tracked down those eyewitnesses and interviewed them. He must have met with Jesus’ mother Mary, an old woman by now, living in the house of Jesus’ dearest friend, the Apostle John, who would later write his own biography of Jesus. How poignant it must have been for her to sit with the Greek doctor and talk over all those personal details that she had “treasured up … and pondered … in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

Luke didn’t have a microphone to record his interviews or a computer to write them up. He didn’t have Evernote or Scrivener to juggle his drafts. He didn’t even have index cards or cheap legal pads!

Luke did his homework, like any good writer.

He made sure his biography was grounded in history. This is not a magic dreamtime of fairy tales:

“In the time of Herod king of Judea” (Luke 1:5)
“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree” (Luke 2:1)
“Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:2)

Luke’s story happened in a real place:

“Nazareth, a town in Galilee” (Luke 1:26)
“to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David” (Luke 2:4)

He even gives us Jesus’ family tree (Luke 3:23-37) to prove this is a real person, not historical fiction set in the time of King Herod. (I know, this part is pretty confusing because it doesn’t match the family tree given in Matthew 1:2-16 once the Kingdom of David had been destroyed and the people sent into exile. It may be that Matthew and Luke picked different names to emphasize since there are skips in the earlier parts as well. Or it may be that Luke gives us Mary’s heritage and Matthew gives us Jesus’ legal heritage as the adopted son of Joseph.)

Luke’s times and places could be checked out by the sceptical. They were real.

When I write historical fiction, I spread out maps; I study costume books; I search the Internet for cultural details; I’m careful not to introduce anachronisms. But in the end, real as they seem to me and, I hope, to my readers, my characters are made up. Even if my plot is based on things that really happened in the time of King Henry VIII, the events of my story are not real.

The amazing thing to me as we approach this season of the year is that there really was a young girl in a small town in Galilee who saw an angel. That angel told her the shocking news that she would become pregnant without ever sleeping with her boyfriend. She really did give birth in a stable, and shepherds came and told her a crazy story about angels in the night sky who told them where they would find the baby. A first-century researcher investigated and wrote it all down so that we “might know the certainty of the things [we] have been taught” (Luke 1:4).

My faith is grounded in history—real people, real places, real events—a real Savior who came to save me from a very real sin problem. This Christmas crawl out from under the giftwrap, the cookie recipes, and mounds of guests and remember: Luke 2 is NOT International Christian Fiction.

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LeAnne Hardy has celebrated Christmas in six countries on four continents. She loves the music of the season and the story that goes far beyond a night in a stable. Her fiction reflects her faith, her passion for storytelling that stretches the mind and soul, and the cultures she has lived in. Learn more at www.leannehardy.net .

Writing about Place

A country lane in Wales,
the setting of Honddu Vale, book 2
in my Glastonbury Grail series.

Place. Every story has one.

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:8-9).

Of course, now we are getting into plot—foreshadowing the central conflict to come, when the man chooses to disobey his Creator’s instruction not to eat from the tree and so destroys the trusting relationship they had. That’s called “the initiating incident” that sets the rest of the story in motion, what Sally Lloyd-Jones calls "God’s Great Rescue Plan" to redeem all of creation and save a people for himself. (And just wait until you get to that incredible climax in Revelation when the King reclaims his throne and evil is banished forever!)

But the whole thing begins in a place.

The author of Genesis is pretty specific about this place. Four rivers are named. We recognize two of them, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Two others, the Pishon and the Gihon, are unknown to us, but by the description of where they flow, we get the impression that there was a time when those, too, would have been recognized by listeners. Eden was a real place with a real geography.

Place gives a sense of reality, of groundedness. Those of us who write about places unfamiliar to most of our readers have a challenge to make that place feel real.

So how do we usher readers through the door into the place of our story?

Felicity's clock can be seen to the left, but not the figures.

First, we do it from the beginning. I don’t want to be two-thirds of the way into the book before I discover that the action is taking place in the suburb of a major city, not in a rural vacation community and the lake where they meet is Lake Erie, not a fishing pond in the woods. In chapter 1 of Donna Fletcher Crow’s A Newly Crimsoned Reliquary, we read:

At the corner of Cornmarket and High Street [Felicity] paused at Carfax Tower which marked the center of Oxford. Carfax was the Roman designation for crossroads, and surely this was the busiest intersection in the city … She turned to cross the street when the blue, scarlet and gold figures [of the clock] began striking the hour. She counted to six then the sound of bells drowned out everything else as all across Oxford, from seemingly every tower, a glorious cacophony called everyone to stop and look upward.

That Roman reference tells us instantly that we aren’t in Oxford, Kansas, and the pealing bells give us a feel for something a world away from the American Midwest. Knowing Donna, you can bet your life that in downtown Oxford today you would find the Carfax building at the busy corner of Cornmarket and High Streets and hear those bells. (There is nothing like an inaccurate detail to rip readers familiar with the setting from their reading dream.)

We show place with tiny details that give a clue to the larger picture. That’s where precise language comes in. If I tell you that my character sat down beneath a tree, each of you congers a different picture in her mind. But if I tell you the character sat down beneath an old oak, suddenly you are in deep forest in a temperate climate. I don’t have to describe the mossy bank. You already see it in your mind’s eye. What if I tell you he sat under a coconut palm? The tree is not the only thing to shift in your mental picture. Now you are running your fingers through hot sand. If I tell you he sat under an acacia (and you have some knowledge of Africa), you will picture not just an umbrella thorn, but the whole expanse of African bush country with maybe a zebra or a giraffe in the background.

"Death to Bandits" says this political graffiti
 on a street corner in Mozambique
during the civil war.

In my first YA novel, The Wooden Ox, I wanted to show the country of Mozambique as my family knew it during the Mozambican civil war in the 1980s. After beginning with action that introduced the characters and showed how bumpy the road was, I wrote,

The column of cars and trucks racing across the countryside stretched as far as Keri could see ahead and behind them. From time to time they passed a burned out vehicle at the side of the road—a reminder of what could happen if the Andersons pulled out of line. The coluna wouldn’t wait while you changed a tire or a fan belt ... There was not a herdboy in sight nor a sign of a cow or goat. Telephone lines hung in loose strands from poles at odd angles.

A burned out vehicle, loose strands of telephone wire—this is not a primitive wilderness, but a land made desolate by war.

Luke's view along the South-Western
slopes of the Snowy Mountains

We show place through action. Characters interact with those telling details. We draw them to the readers’ attention as they are drawn to the character’s attention. Donna’s character Felicity is walking down an Oxford street. Keri is riding in a military convoy. In Narelle Atkins’ The Doctor’s Return we get a feel for her native Australia as her character Luke cycles down the road.

The midmorning sun scorched his bare arms and legs, the weather unseasonably hot for this early in spring. He swiped beads of sweat off his brow, his hair damp under his bike helmet … A herd of brumbies galloped through the pine forest on the high side of the road. The wild horses raced up the hill, weaving around the pine trees.

We feel the heat through Luke’s sunburned arms and his sweat. Notice how Narelle shows me what brumbies are without an explanation that would be unnatural to Luke’s POV.

Rocky Mountains of British Columbia

We use place to reveal character. In her book The Man for Her Alice Valdal writes:

  A shaft of sunlight emerged from behind the mountains, striking harshly against her eyes.  She turned her face up.  A hawk, already on the hunt, circled above the meadow.  As she watched, it folded its wings and plummeted toward the ground, swooping in on its kill.  She turned her head away.  For all its beauty and bounty, this was a cruel land, culling without mercy the feeble and helpless.  She hefted her rifle over her shoulder.

In the raw beauty of this British Columbian mountain scene we meet a woman with her rifle over her shoulder who refuses to be either feeble or helpless.

Dawson, Yukon

We use place to set the mood of a scene or the whole story. Look at how Marcia Laycock shows the poignant mood of A Tumbled Stone when Alex Perrin returns to his old cabin in the Canadian Yukon.

It seemed strange not to be greeted by the cacophony of barking huskies. He noticed one of the dog chains was still wrapped around a tree, half buried under bits of decaying branches. Dry brown evergreen needles layered the ground between exposed roots, their gnarled lengths bending up and down into and out of the hard ground. … Here and there a bit of green moss clung to greying wood. The yard smelled of dampness and rot.

The abandoned dog chain, the dryness of the needles, the hardness of the ground resisting those gnarled roots set a dark mood. That bit of green moss gives us just a hint of hope, but even that is squashed by the smell of dampness and rot. And over all we feel the Yukon wilderness. What different details would Marcia have chosen if Alex were arriving at a new cabin in that same Yukon with an exciting future before him?

At the far left a younger me gets a taste
of Indian culture in 1965
along with friends and family members.

We show place with our senses. In the paragraph above, Marcia uses sound (or its lack), smell, and touch as well as some stunning visual images. Don’t leave out taste. It can be a very powerful sense. Here Christine Lindsey uses smell to evoke India in Shadowed in Silk, the first of her award-winning Twilight of the Raj series.

Tucking a strand of hair into her chignon, Abby savored a tantalizing whiff of overripe fruit, roses, marigolds and cloves, mingled with the acrid smell of dust.

Place grounds the story in reality. It makes me believe it could actually have happened to real people even if the place only exists in fantasy. That sense of place is something to be kept alive throughout the story. My story of the Mozambican civil war could not have taken place in the Canadian Yukon anymore than Donna’s liturgical mystery could have taken place in Australia.

Many of us write about places we know. The Internet with it’s photos, maps and travelogs is a fabulous resource for authors who haven’t visited the places they are writing about. Because readers fill in the blanks with their own knowledge your job is to be accurate even if you don’t know all the details. That way those who don’t know anymore that you do can fill in with their own imaginations. Those who do know will not be jolted by inaccuracies.

Modern readers won’t sit still for long descriptive paragraphs that characterized the classics we studied in high school. Our sensory details and feeling for place need to do double duty to set the mood, reveal character, foreshadow plot or advance the action.

What are your favourite stories that reveal a unique place?

What sensory details open a place to your imagination?

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LeAnne Hardy had her first cross-cultural experience at the ripe age of ... Never mind. In 1965 her father took the family to northeast India on a three-month missions trip. Since then she has lived in six countries on four continents. Her fiction reflects her faith, her passion for storytelling that stretches the mind and soul, and the cultures she has experienced. Learn more at www.leannehardy.net .