Angel Mountain

By Christine Sunderland

Description:

A holy hermit, a Holocaust survivor, a literary librarian, and a Christian geneticist search for peace and happiness in a culture of chaos.
Hermit Abram, 80, and his sister Elizabeth, 84, escaped the Holocaust in Greece and made it to America as children. Elizabeth retired from teaching high school Western Civilization, and Abram, retired from teaching classics at U.C. Berkeley, converted to Christianity and retreated to Angel Mountain to pray with his icons for the world and preach from the mountainside.
Elizabeth hires Catherine, 33, to sort her home library. When Gregory, 37, a geneticist supporting intelligent design, falls from the mountainside and is rescued by Abram, these four lives are changed forever. The earth quakes, fires rage, and lightening strikes, as antifa protestors threaten the hermit and his friends. Angels bridge Heaven and Earth, and eternity intersects time. Is this the end of the world? Is the kingdom coming?

Book Takeaway:

Faith supports science and science supports faith; identity is formed by our choices; study the past to understand the present; Heaven is real, angels visit us, and there is a Judgment; thanksgiving leads to happiness, and grievance to depression.

Why the author wrote this book:

I was inspired by three memoirs: Yolanda Avram Willis' A Hidden Child in Greece: Rescue in the Holocaust; Francis Collins' The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief; Andrew Klavan's The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ. I created main characters based on these stories. I was also fascinated by the recent arguments for intelligent design and ID’s compatibility with forms of evolution theory. The rise of violence and the silencing of speech on university campuses, the collapse of Western culture and the need for the history and values of Western Civilization to be reinstated as part of required curriculum, the importance of memory, history, and understanding the past---all these themes---commanded my concern. I also wanted to talk a bit about genetics and the need for moral/ethical oversight in this brave new science. The Christian view of life, death, and resurrected life, the Scriptural view of Heaven and Earth were also important subjects I felt called to write about. And did I mention books, words, and libraries? All these themes have been hiding in my head waiting to get out and live in a story.