Crushed Hopes and Hopeful Beginnings (Light in the Empire)

By Carol Ashby

Description:

Crushed Hopes and Hopeful Beginnings: a Roman-era adventure with dangerous choices, unlikely friendships, and world views in conflict.

Can God work all things for good if you don’t even think he’s real?

Lusario was content in Cyrene as part of the Philandros household. After he returns from serving the youngest son, Diokles, while he studies in Alexandria, Lusario expects to become a paid tutor for his master, earning the money to buy his freedom. But when Diokles uses him to pay a gambling debt, he must go to Carthago as the slave of a man who hates him. His once-bright future is gone forever. So why does his Christian friend Timon insist things will turn out so much better than he expects?

But Carthago brings new people, like Caelus Martinus, and new possibilities into Lusario’s hopeless world. Could Timon be right? When Lusario sees a chance to escape his fate, will going for it give him a future again, or only hasten his death?

Crushed Hopes and Hopeful Beginnings is a short novel about the turbulent (is unusual or surprising a better word? Something else? Roller-coaster is too modern a word, but that’s what it is) lives of Lusario and his friends three years before Carol Ashby’s next full-length novel, River of Life, when two of them embark on a journey up the Nile that changes everything.

Book Takeaway:

Being a good friend can open the door to sharing our faith, and our story of what God has done for us can lead to sincere questions. Sometimes our friends are afraid of what it might cost them to accept the truth about what Jesus did and then choose to follow him. But as long as we keep sharing the truth and loving them, only God knows where that will end.

Why the author wrote this book:

Crushed Hopes and Hopeful Beginnings is something new for me: a prequel for my next full-length novel, River of Life. Like many authors, I spend a lot of time and effort creating a backstory for each main character and for many secondary characters who are important to the story. I need to know my people’s past so I can write their future. I hadn’t planned to turn a backstory into a prequel, but I felt God’s nudges to do it this time. As I was figuring out how Lusario and Caelus came together and developed the friendship that would be so important in the next novel, the ups and downs I dragged Lusario through turned into an adventure worth sharing. His Christian friend, Timon, changed from a single-scene character into a man I would like to count among my own friends. So, my usual short, narrative backstory grew into this short novel filled with danger for my Stoic hero, unlikely friendships, and courageous faith.