A.B. Brownell has
been writing for Christian publications since age 15 and spent much of her life
as a daily newspaper reporter. She has a BS degree in Mass Communications and
worked most of her career at The Pueblo
Chieftain in Colo., where she spent the last seven years as a medical
writer. After moving to Springfield, MO in her retirement, she continues to
free lance for Christian publications and write non-fiction and fiction books.
Enter
an area where people are missing and radicals want to obliterate Christianity
from the earth. After Joe Baker’s parents mysteriously disappear, he finds
himself with a vicious man after him. Joe and an unusual gang team up to find
his mom and dad. The gang is dedicated to preventing and solving crimes with
ordinary harmless things such as noise, water, and a pet skunk instead of
blades and bullets. Joe reads the Bible hoping to discover whether God will
answer prayer and bring his parents home. In his dreams, Joe slips into the
skin of Bible characters and what happened to them, happens to him—the peril
and the victories. Yet, crying out in his sleep causes him to end up in a
mental hospital’s juvenile unit. Will he escape or will he be harmed? Will he
find his parents? Does God answer prayer?
WHAT
INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE THIS NOVEL, ADA?
After I retired, I established an
after-school and summers program because of writing too many news stories about
latch-key kids, juvenile delinquency and young people who turn away from God. I
observed children with little productive to do in their spare time, such as
becoming established in the faith. So I contacted the director of our church
day care to see what she thought.
“We need something for the upper
elementary students and a few older ones,” she said.
My vision was to build up our
church kids spiritually, but I was surprised to discover a large number of
Social Services children in that age group enrolled.
I wrote the curriculum: “Dynamite Decisions for Youth,” “God in
American History” and “Love is Dynamite.”
But during the summer they needed
something relaxing in the afternoons and Joe the Dreamer was born.
I hoped to impart in them a love
for God’s Word and a desire to read it on their own. The story begins with a
mystery. Joe’s parents disappear. Joe prays God will bring them back, but his
faith is weak. So while he and his little sister, Penny, live with their non-Christian
uncle, Joe reads the Bible every night. When he falls asleep, he often slips
into the skin of a Bible character.
Lions breathe down his neck. He
stands in a furnace of fire, but is not burned. He lands in a cistern and ends
up in slavery. Then he walks on water with Jesus. Several times Joe sees
angels.
Yet, Joe’s days become a living
nightmare. Somebody is after him. The police are hunting for Joe’s dad—not
because he’s missing but because he’s accused of stealing valuable software for
a brain chip to control seizures. Joe screams sometimes during his dreams and
his uncle believes he has a mental illness. Joe is committed to the state
mental hospital.
In the subplot, the reader sees
Joe’s parents imprisoned at a nearby castle by radicals who want to erase
Christianity from America.
Joe joins a teen gang—the Gallant
Guardians—dedicated to solving and preventing crime by using ordinary harmless
things like marbles, water, noise, rope and a pet skunk.
I learned my experience as a
newspaper reporter could be used. The brain chip came out of interviews I had
with neurologists about seizure control==except the radicals want a chip to cause seizures in influential
Christians.
The scenes in the mental hospital
grew out of my reporting experience, too, as did many other things in this
mystery/adventure teen novel.
WHAT IS ONE FUN THING READERS DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU?
This
experience was fun until later.
I disobeyed my dad by going ice
skating on the river and stayed out so long I froze my feet. I put them in hot
water as soon as I got home, and they turned black and swelled so large I
couldn’t wear my shoes. My sins had found me out (Numbers 32:23). I’m blessed.
The Lord did a miracle and without medical treatment my feet healed and you’d
never know I had severe frostbite and did exactly the worst thing I could do
afterward.
Perhaps that’s why I try to teach
youth to follow the Lord and His commandments, such as, “Children obey your
parents.”
Sounds like a lively and compelling read, Ada!
~~
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