Celebrating Beyond Prejudice Book Release and Looking Ahead

As of Tuesday, July 5, 2011, Beyond Prejudice was officially released by Liberty University Press.  Heartfelt thanks to everyone who made this dream a reality.  Order your copy through http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ or http://www.amazon.com/ or special order through your favorite bookstore.  Also, thanks to Diane Estrella, Sharlene MacLaren, Margaret Daley, and Northeast Iowa Community College for their recent features.  You’ve all been wonderful to work with!

If you enjoyed Beyond Prejudice, would you consider writing a review on http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ or http://www.amazon.com/ for potential readers?  Positive reviews are invaluable in book sales.  Thanks to those individuals who have already done so.

Though Beyond Prejudice was released just last week, I’m looking ahead to a new baby and a new book project.  Please keep my husband and me in your prayers as we prepare to welcome our first son into the world within the next few weeks.  We are astounded at God’s goodness in the smoothness of the pregnancy and anticipate a full-term delivery.  Also pray for the two big sisters who will undoubtedly be wonderful little mommies throughout the transition.

I’m considering writing a sequel to Beyond Prejudice, but before I start, I’d like your feedback as readers.  In the meantime, I’m working on a contemporary novel set around my experiences as a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) mom with our first child, Elizabeth.  Get a sneak peak on the next blog post!  Read the “story behind the story” of Beyond Prejudice below in this Q & A session and get a glimpse of those experiences.

Beyond Prejudice Q & A

1. Q: Why did you write Beyond Prejudice?

A:  I’ve always had an interest in multicultural missions, even as a teenager.  In one of my homeschool history textbooks, I read a one-page entry of the Japanese-American interment.  I was intrigued by this little known fact of American history and found books at the public library to satisfy my curiosity.  It was then that I knew there was a story to be told while educating and entertaining readers.  I started the manuscript as part of an Institute of Children’s Literature course at age 18.

2. Q:  Why the title Beyond Prejudice?

A:  Not only is Beyond Prejudice an appropriate title for what was going on racially in the world in the 1940’s, it also portrays Christ looking beyond our sins to see our need for His saving grace.  To believers as well, He is extending daily grace to trust His plan.

3. Q:  Trusting God through hardship seems to be an underlying theme of your novel.  Is there any personal significance to this?

A:  Most definitely.  The main character Elizabeth struggles to trust God when her fiancé, David, is interned as a result of Executive Order 9066.  She questions her love for David and seeks immediate comfort rather than trusting that God’s plans and purposes for this season in her life are more wonderful than she can imagine.  I have been like Elizabeth and have learned trusting God as a result of my circumstances and experiencing His faithfulness in spite of my own shortcomings.

4. Q:  What was a key turning point of trusting God for you?

A:  I was learning to trust God as a young adult when He brought me my husband, Daniel.  There was no striving involved.  God just made it happen.  However, the single-most circumstance of my life that compelled me to trust God was the pre-term birth of our first-born, Elizabeth Anne, at 23 ½ weeks gestation.  She was 1 pound 4 ½ ounces and 11 inches long.  Before birth, she was given a 35% chance of survival.  While traveling 200 miles round-trip to the NICU every other day for five months, I learned the validity of God performing miracles today.  It was a daily struggle of trust, though, as some days she was progressing, gaining weight, and breathing some on her own, and other days she was digressing, retaining water, and struggling on 80% oxygen.

5. Q:  How do you know trusting God works?

A:  I have the proof in a healthy, energetic, mentally-alert 3-year old who requires no oxygen or feeding tube.  The stereotypes placed on her at birth have been broken by the healing power of Jesus Christ.

6. Q:  Trusting God doesn’t guarantee us the results we want.  How have you experienced that as well?

A:  God has also taught me the concept of His will being far superior to mine.  One way is through the peaks and valleys over the seven years it took for Beyond Prejudice to progress from idea to publication.  Had I been able to do it my own way, I’d have had it published the minute I finished the last chapter.  But God in His omniscience commanded I wait, give birth to a micro-preemie, give birth to a full-term daughter, and expect a son first, learning to trust the whole way!

Another way God has taught me this parallels the pre-term birth of my first-born.  A month after her birth, my father-in-law was killed in a single truck/trailer accident.  We had moved two weeks prior and the weight of the strain was enough to break human capacity.  Our daughter, then just over two pounds, was sent from Gundersen Lutheran in La Crosse, WI to Mayo in Rochester, MN to have a surgical ligation to clamp a valve near her heart to aid oxygenation a couple days before the funeral.  Crying out to God for strength and trusting He’s in control was the only thing that saw us through those heart-wrenching days.

7. Q:  Who would most be interested in reading Beyond Prejudice?

A:  Women will especially enjoy Beyond Prejudice, as the challenges Elizabeth faces are those women often deal with as they pursue God’s will for their lives.  Women often handle the situations of life through their emotions, sometimes overlooking that trusting God is essential to living a victorious Christian walk.  Beyond Prejudice gives breath to those emotional struggles, as Elizabeth learns that trusting God is her ultimate source of security.

In addition to identifying with women on the issue of trusting God amidst adversity, Beyond Prejudice may appeal to those younger women who are reaching marriageable age in a culture where faith and moral values have little to do with the selection of a life partner.  The novel will encourage young women in trusting God to provide the best choice in a husband at the right time.  Also, individuals and/or couples who are or have been in interracial relationships will identify with David and Elizabeth.