A NEW LOOK FOR GRACE

Fresh cover, same award-winning story . . .

. . . and same old author!

QUESTIONS ABOUT ME (DEB) AND MY NOVEL

(Adapted from an Author Interview by Michelle Griep)

A licensed pilot, speaker, cattle herder, academic editor . . . So Deb, why writing?

Actually I’ve been writing since I was a child, and all my growing-up dreams centered on becoming a novelist (from the time I penned my first story in elementary school through college communication classes). But I see life in itself as an adventure to be lived, with fiction writing just a result. So when I fell in love, when I birthed babies, when I’ve been presented with opportunities to fly or speak or round up cattle—well, how can I say no? Living heartily and writing at the same time hasn’t always been a possibility for me, as I’m not a great multitasker; there have been years during which I’ve written very little publishable material. So going to grad school at age 44 was a turning point, a way to kick-start serious writing from a firm theological base. I guess you could say I’d been paying my dues and felt I might finally have something of substance to offer the reading public, with the time to do it.

What’s your favorite part about the writing game? Least favorite?

I love daydreaming; I love plotting a piece and developing its characters, researching and anticipating its effect, and chatting about it and going to sleep with that story on my mind. My least favorite part of the process is self-promotion, so I’m delighted to have recently joined Mosaic Collection Books, an international circle of women writers supporting one another in not only marketing but also creating.

In your newly relaunching (debut) novel, The Third Grace, the heroine is torn between her rural upbringing and her search for self. How much of you is there in the heroine?

There’s a great deal of Deb in Aglaia. For starters, like Aglaia, I fell madly in love at a young age and have a tendency to romanticize circumstances. Like her, I’ve lived the tension of rural versus urban life and learned my own place in it geographically as it shaped my attitudes about myself and the world. (For example, when I relocated from city to ranch—in the opposite direction of Aglaia’s move—I adapted by changing my wardrobe like a costume, wearing Levis and checkered shirts for a while, and even tried to like Willy Nelson’s singing!) But, as with Aglaia, my basic self wasn’t ever annihilated and has had to be addressed—especially as it pertains to my relationship with a living God. Aglaia rebels; my rebellion has been slightly more subtle but just as condemning. Aglaia mourns; I’ve had my own brand of sorrow that elicits grief. Aglaia turns to the arts, imagination, and professional avarice for satisfaction of her soulish thirst; I, too, have been tempted to fall into idolatry of creation rather than Creator. Is there really anything new under the sun?

Where did you get the idea for the story?

When I first visited the Louvre museum in Paris in 1989 and stood transfixed before James Pradier’s marble statue grouping, The Three Graces, I knew I’d found the icon for my novel. The three figures immediately suggested to me a trinity of womanhood, triplets in a way, all made of the same “stuff” yet each looking at something different—each with her own focal point or perspective or philosophy. In Pradier’s rendition of the Graces, one looks downward at the earth, another upward at the sky, the third outward at others. They came to represent to me humanity as a whole and, in effect, the personalities of the three lead characters in my novel.

What surprises you most about being a published author?

My appetite. Have you ever tasted pan-seared foie gras on a toasted baguette? One bite of that incredibly rich bit of heaven is just not enough! As deeply satisfying as I find publication of my first novel, I’m surprised at how insufficient it is (and how quickly!) to quell the hankering for the next mouthful—to write my next novel and see it published, too. How can I stop at just a taste?

Got any writing advice for aspiring authors?

Yes—I’d like to pass along the words of an early mentor in college, who said:

“Don’t fret about not writing if you’re too busy living; it will all come out in the end.”

There’s no way of knowing who we or others really are unless we enter into our lives with zest and observation—a necessary preparation for writing, I think.

What question didn’t I ask that you wished I would’ve?

I wish you’d asked, “What kind of reader did you have in mind as you wrote this book?” I’d have answered:

Well, first of all, my intended audience for this novel was not readers of prairie romance, or those who are squeamish over sensual writing, or those who are confident of their position before God. All the while that I plotted and drafted, Psalm 61:2 sang through my mind:

“From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

In other words, I wasn’t writing to those who already know where they stand in Christ, but rather to those who—having left their past behind—are still yearning for a destination beyond their view.

In my novel’s epigraph I quote G.K. Chesterton:

“Man has always lost his way. He has been a tramp ever since Eden; but he always knew, or thought he knew, what he was looking for.”

(What’s Wrong with the World)

I wrote The Third Grace for all the Aglaias out there—for women who, in pursuit of their own success and self-definition, have left their “Mary Grace” behind and are beginning to wonder if their background might after all hold some clue as to what it is they’re really seeking. On the first page, I dedicate my novel thus: “To all my lost sisters wandering alone out of earshot—His voice still calls.”

BACK COVER BLURB

The past casts a long shadow, especially when it points to a woman’s first love.

As a teen, Mary Grace fell in love with a French exchange student visiting her family’s Nebraska farm. François renamed her “Aglaia”—after one of the beautiful Three Graces of Greek mythology—and set her heart longing for something more than her parents’ simplistic life and faith. Now, fifteen years later, Aglaia’s budding success as a costume designer in Denver’s arts scene convinces her that she’s left the naïve country girl far behind—but “Mary Grace” has deep roots, as Aglaia learns during a business trip to Paris. Her discovery of sensual notes François jotted into the margins of a Bible during that long-ago fling, a silly errand imposed by her mother, and the scheming of her sophisticated mentor all conspire to create a thirst in her soul that neither evocative daydreams nor professional success can quench.

The Third Grace takes you on a dual journey across oceans and time–in the footsteps of a woman torn between her rural upbringing and her search for self.

AUTHOR BIO

I was raised, along with four siblings (in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) by an entrepreneurial father and an artistic mother, both of whom encouraged creative expression. My first dozen articles and short stories appeared in paying Christian magazines after college, in my early years as a ranch wife—during which time I also learned to cook for huge branding crews, herd cattle, and fly a small plane. In 2001, when our three homeschooling kids were all back in the classroom, I returned to school myself to earn an M.A. in theological studies and then began academic editing of doctoral dissertations and journal articles. For about six years I wrote for a national professional quarterly, and other nonfiction work of mine appeared in various publications (one I’m especially proud of is Christian History).

The Third Grace, first published in 2011, won the prestigious Grace Irwin Grand Prize. My nonfiction book published in 2015 is titled Roots and Branches: The Symbol of the Tree in the Imagination of G.K. Chesterton. But my love has always been fiction, and my next novel, The Red Journal, was published in 2019.

I’m still producing, slowly but surely, with a collection of short stories now in the works and several novel plots up my sleeve. I currently reside with my husband in an empty nest on the banks of a babbling brook in southern Alberta—just a stone’s throw north of the Montana border—and write to my heart’s content.

(Adapted from an interview conducted by Michelle Griep: http://www.novelrocket.com/2012/01/deb-elkinkdebut-author-and-so-much-more.html)

THE MOSAIC OF HUMANITY

Pantakrator Mosaic, Leon V1, 10th century, Hagia Sophia

When I was a teen, my artistic mother created a mosaic on the powder room wall: three gracious sisters in Grecian robes scooping water from a rush-lined river. Mom sketched the outline, selected the ceramic tiles for colour, snipped them to fit, and grouted the pieces into the pleasing design that still decorates my childhood memory.

More recently I stood in awe beneath domes decorated with the glorious ancient mosaics of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, a city once known as Byzantium spanning East and West on the shores of the Bosphorus Sea in Turkey. A church was first established there by Constantine in AD 325 on the foundations of a pagan temple. The current Christian cathedral took its place two hundred years later, with the Ottoman Empire co-opting it in the fifteenth century. Today, secularized Hagia Sophia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Despite damage by time, clime, and desecration, Sophia’s restored and redeemed mosaics are considered by art historians to be instrumental in the study of iconography.

The beauty of mosaic art lies in the grand sweep of the composition, not in the intricacy of its tiny tiles (or tesserae). Similarly, the beauty of humanity lies in the historical vista from Adam and Eve through every person onwards. Although each fragment, each story, has its irreplaceable function, I must admit that the tessera of me sometimes feels insignificant in the great montage of this earthly existence. Of course, focusing in on a detail of the overall pastiche (whether ceramic or flesh and blood) allows for close examination of an excerpt, but the main point is the interaction—the belonging—that makes up the whole.

Now, I was born—and thus belonged—to a nuclear family of five kids; we added our colour to the wider tableau of two dozen cousins clustering around the Christmas tree at Grandma’s house. I patched myself into a fellowship of urban schoolmates and a fabulous youth group. When I began sharing marital life with my cattle-rancher groom, I didn’t stop belonging to my birth family, my townie comrades, or the wider church, but I was adopted into a new community by in-laws who took me as their own and rural neighbours who inundated me with casseroles and community. Three more pieces were added to the mosaic with the birth and nurturing of children, and I was grouted into other scenes as well—writing groups, sewing circles, classrooms, and international friendships. The individual chips all fit together and contribute to the overarching artwork designed by God and built upon variegation.

It was into this mosaic of humanity that Jesus Christ—the Artist Himself—appeared from eternity to become one of us (according to Hebrews 2). He took on our nature—our clay. He assumed the characteristics that fit Him into the form and function of the world and its people, sharing in our experience, partaking in our sufferings. The Son called us to Himself as His siblings, children of God, and He made of believers a family belonging to one another. He said to our Father (v. 12):

“I will tell of Your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing Your praise.”

In this loving way, God saves us from the destruction of the Evil One—that iconoclast scheming to desecrate the image of Christ in us. Ultimately we belong not to the mosaic but to its praise-worthy Maker. One day before the end of time, each tessera of this life will be fully restored within the original pattern lovingly sketched out for the universe. Meanwhile, to maintain active fellowship with Brother Jesus, we must pay close attention to what we’ve heard in the Word lest we drift away from the Artist—that Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of our souls.