Crooked Lines

By Holly J Michael

Description:

On the shores of Lake Michigan, Rebecca Meyer seeks escape. Guilt-ridden over her little sister’s death, she sets her heart on India, a symbol of peace. Across the ocean in South India, Sagai Raj leaves his tranquil hill station home and impoverished family to answer a higher calling. Pushing through diverse cultural and religious milieus, he labors toward his goals, while wrong turns and bad choices block Rebecca from hers. Traveling similar paths and bridged across oceans through a priest, the two desire peace and their divine destiny. But vows and blind obedience at all costs must be weighed…and buried memories, unearthed. Crooked Lines, a beautifully crafted debut novel, threads the lives of two determined souls from different continents and cultures. Compelling characters struggle with spirituality through despair and deceptions in search of truth.

Book Takeaway:

That God Write Straight through the Crooked Lines of Our Lives.

Awards:

Why the author wrote this book:

My husband, from India and his friends would tell me amazing stories about their lives in India as young seminarians. Their experiences—being sent all over India for education and training—fascinated me; like meeting Mother Teresa, working in orphanages, ministering in the “untouchable” villages and rescuing bonded laborers, and other incredible experiences between the late 1970s through late 1990s India. Since I love fiction, I decided to fictionalize the stories and contrast and compare the main character, Sagai, with a person coming of age and living in the same decades in the Unites States, Rebecca. So, using similar themes throughout each chapter, I threaded their lives together, making them known only to each other by a priest who mentored Sagai, visits the US, meets Rebecca and becomes her pen pal.