- Title: Healing Grace
- Author: Lisa Lickel
- Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
- Genre: Inspirational Fiction
- Release Date: April 2013
Peggy and BookBites fans, I’m truly saddened but honored to be the last guest. I understand time constraints; however, it often hurts to make the decision to trade one activity for another. Sometimes I wish for another hour in the day just to not feel guilty about sitting around, reading. I can use my Kindle while I’m tread-milling, though. That’s handy.
Healing Grace: a novel, is a blessing for me to be able to share with you. It’s the second novel I ever tried to write, back in 2004, and a story of my heart. My brother developed a frightening, undiagnosed illness after one of his international trips for work. He lost coordination, was in constant pain, exhausted, weak, and lost weight. No one seemed to be able to help for many months. Eventually he was found to have a rare infection that attacks the nervous system much like multiple sclerosis. He has recovered since, not a hundred percent, but close. He’s my hero. During this scary time I wondered what it would be like if the gifts of the Holy Spirit were practiced today. How would they manifest themselves? And so the story was born. I’m not trying to make up anyone’s mind; I know there are strong opinions regarding this faith practice. I write fiction, the ultimate “what if,” and I hope to entertain as well as provide a thoughtful base of conversation.
Blurb: Grace has a secret. Just like her aunt, and her grandmother before her, she could fix anyone with a touch, at a cost she never questioned -- until her husband developed cancer and died. Believing no one would forgive her for not being able to save him, Grace runs from the life she knew, hoping even God wouldn’t find her in a little out-of-the-way town in Michigan. It takes a very sick man and his little boy to help her face her past, accept who she is and battle her way back to redemption. Just when she and Ted begin to hope for the future, he relapses. Grace faces the ultimate choice once again: Trust God to work through her precious gift, or let a terminally ill man die. What if the price is more than she can pay?
First Chapter: Opening Scene
Grace Runyon paused in the doorway of the little house. She listened to the real estate agent drive away with a little zip and a crunch of the gravel drive and felt a moment’s panic.
“Not buyer’s remorse at this stage of the game, my good woman.” She marched inside, carrying two overloaded paper bags of supplies from the convenience mart. “And stop talking to yourself.”
The real estate lady had checked the lights to make sure the local electric company in tiny East Bay, Michigan had “turned her on” —her words. Grace’s responding chuckle came out like a zebra snort, one that smelled lion and was trying to warn the herd.
“You’ll be all right,” the plump, business-like woman reassured her before she left. “It’s a ways out of town, but not too far, and the neighbors are good people.” She looked down at the drive and stirred some gravel with her brown patent pump. “In fact, this place used to belong to one of the brothers next door.”
She pressed a card into Grace’s limp hand. “Now, here’s my card. You just call any time.”
One of the brothers? Not information pertinent to the deed, she hoped.
Grace had merely glanced at the place before signing the papers yesterday. “The place hasn’t been opened up in a number of months. The last occupant was ill,” the agent said. “I can give you the name of a good cleaning crew.”
“A little dirt doesn’t scare me. I can handle it,” she’d blithely replied.
Today, in the sparse rays of early spring through fly-specked windows, she wondered if she’d been a little hasty. The dusty, braided rug did not look like an inviting place to set down the sacks she toted in from her green Subaru.
Deep, calming breaths read the story of the place: sickness and neglect hovered almost tangibly. Cobwebs, glittering dust motes. Dangerously lopsided drapes.
A lonely pile of toys, a car and some plastic figures she didn’t recognize, and a cobbler bench huddled beneath a weight bench in the corner near the open stairway.
Passing through an opening across the long, narrow room, she found herself in the kitchen—a sad, neglected kitchen—and definitely not the heart of this home. She set the bags on the table and dumped her purse on a chair. A slow turn made her wonder what she’d seen that made her crazy enough to buy this house.
“What kind of person paints her kitchen ice-green? And what’s up with the grinning daisies? Honestly.”
Remains of the day were left as is. Her Tennessee kitchen had been painted a cheerful yellow and kept as spotless as her exam room at the clinic.
Something rustled in the cupboards. Hopefully only mice. She sighed and picked up two forks and a bent serving spoon that had been left on the kitchen table. Little flotsam, napkin bits, and nut shells of some kind decorated the cracked and scorched ancient linoleum countertops.
She opened one of the packages of cheap, white paper towels she’d purchased and used one to gingerly swipe away attached spider webs. With a grimace she quickly thrust the wad into the trash and slammed the lid, its metallic echo a hollow laugh. You wish it was that easy to erase your past, don’t you? Created a web of a mess. Ran. Who’s left to clean up after you?
Grace blinked and twisted the porcelain handle of the tap. Warm orange gunk gurgled out and spewed thickly around the stained sink bowl. At least it didn’t smell bad. She cheered when it soon cleared up.
“Call me easily pleased. And, seriously, stop talking to yourself.”
She pulled a pad of paper from her leather handbag and toured the little one and a half story cottage, making notes of the supplies she needed. Clean first, then patch. Definitely painting. And figuring out some furniture. Something to sleep on. “Do I even have a hammer? Talk about starting from scratch.”
Putting together a whole new life after everything she’d been through was risky. She wasn’t exactly hiding, but neither did she care to let anyone know where to find her. Yet. In good time. When the wounds weren’t so fresh and raw; when the wonder of her failure faded from their memories. Jonathan had been a good man. He hadn’t deserved his fate.
Her heart ached for him, for what they’d lost, even though he’d been dying for a long time. Losing him was more of a release.
Still, they blamed her. And rightfully so. So she gave them what they wanted.
Time for a normal life, remember?
A good night’s sleep will do wonders.
By the time the sun faded, Grace had exhausted herself. Scrubbing the kitchen and a cubby of a room behind it she’d claim for her own took buckets of hot water and a pair of neon-yellow rubber gloves, but at least she’d have a clean spot to lay her mattress and sleeping bag. Too tired to eat, she’d stretched herself out and groaned. Thirty-five-year-olds should not be this out of shape.
The room seemed to whirl in a nauseating kaleidoscopic frenzy. No! She wasn’t ready to think about it. Not yet. When she focused again, she stood in bright daylight, looking down into the newly-dug hole. Without looking up she knew they were there, standing around her and staring, accusing.
“Your fault! You let this happen! You let him die when you should have saved him!”
“I tried!” God knows she wanted to save Jonathan. “He was the one—he told me not to try again.” At first, she’d tried to help. Of course she did. He was all she had left. Everyone needed him. Everyone loved him. But it had hurt so much. She hadn’t complained, but after that second time when they had to revive her in the ER, shocked out of her ability to feel anything, he made her go home. Alone. She’d been more afraid of that than the pain.
She lifted her head. Jonathan’s father had his back to her. As she watched, they all, one by one, turned their backs until only Lena, her best friend, was left. “Please, Lena, not you too!”
Running away over the clipped grass of the cemetery seemed the smartest thing she could do. Run, run! Why couldn’t she get anywhere? Her high heels stuck in the lawn and she couldn’t pull free.
Grace reached automatically for the warmth that was no longer there anchoring the other side of the bed. She forced her eyes open against the sleep-tears that nearly welded them shut. The blackness of the room calmed her frantic breathing. She lay still a moment, stars from smacking her head against the wooden floor buzzing like angry lightning bugs. She pushed the tangled sleeping bag from her legs and got to her knees, willing her legs to hold her, her ankles to be strong.Stood. So much for sleep tonight, the first in her new home. If she had to be alone now, at least it was amongst strangers who didn’t know what she’d done.
* * *
Links for Lisa and the book:
Publisher’s page (sale!): https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=713&category_id=69&manufacturer_id=196&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1
Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/healing-grace-lisa-j-lickel/1115150561?ean=2940016518732
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Grace-ebook/dp/B00CFA09IQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366644747&sr=8-1&keywords=Healing+Grace+Lisa+Lickel
About the Giveaway: Electronic format of your choice. Being electronic means anyone can enter- even our Canadian and International readers.
Just leave your name AND email contact information and leave an answer to this question: Have you ever been in a situation such as Grace finds herself in this opening scene? Do share. However, that is optional. But PLEASE be sure to leave your name and email. That’s the only way we can contact the winner.
Giveaway runs through next Saturday, May 4, 2013, with the winner’s name being drawn via Random.org on Sunday, May 5, 2013
Peg here: I want to thank Lisa for sharing this book with us. And many, many thanks to all the authors who have spent time with us on BookBites over the past months.
God’s richest blessings on you, and my heartfelt gratitude to all of you, my loyal blog followers.
BUT—Whispers in Purple isn’t going anywhere! I’ll still be posting here several times a week.
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