The Home Team

By Dave Pratt

Description:

Major Sam Anthem is at the peak of his career as an operator assigned to the Home Team, a dark cover operations team working under the U.S. State Department’s Extreme Operations Group. Despite his considerable accomplishments and love for his work, Sam has begun to realize a need for life to be about something more than yet another, back-to-back righteous, dangerous mission. As a result, he begins to question his continuing role with the team. It is when Sam rescues a missionary healthcare worker, Consuelo Zamora, during an operation in the forests of Mexico. As he gets to know and appreciate Consuelo, it is through her self-confidence, concern for her adopted son, and her faith that Sam begins to see what that ‘something more’ might look like.

The Home Team’s latest mission is to convince one of Mexico’s largest cartels to leave the illicit drug trade and enter the Mexican government and U.S. State Department’s new Drugs to Agriculture program. It is during that mission that Consuelo is taken as leverage against the Home Team’s efforts. With the mission at risk and Consuelo in danger, Sam and the Home Team must fight their way through the cartel’s lethal reluctance to conform, the armed resistance of neighboring cartels, and corrupt government officials back in the States.

Will Sam and the Home Team find Consuelo before the cartel and the government officials eliminate her from the game board? Does she really need saving, given her own personal strength, faith, and courage? It all comes to a surprising end after an action-packed trip from the deep forests of Mexico to Olympia, Washington, and points in between.

Book Takeaway:

John the Baptist did not tell soldiers to quit their jobs. He told them to act justly and not abuse power (Luke 3:14). Jesus praised the faith of the centurion without condemning his profession (Mtthew 8). Soldiers working hand-in-hand with His mission, his needs, can be great people with welcoming hearts.

Why the author wrote this book:

As a retired military officer, with friends who worked in counterintelligence, covert operations, special operations, we frequently considered how we could reconcile our faith with the demands of our job. I discovered that some of the most fierce, dedicated warriors were some of the most spiritual people I ever met. This book talks to their story.