BEFORE: Jared's Story

By Gina Detwiler

Description:

PREQUEL TO THE FORLORN SERIES. Before Jared met Grace, he had lived several lifetimes of heartbreak, struggle, loneliness, and sometimes joy. His father tried to kill him and his family shunned him for the original sin he didn't understand until he came face to face with true evil and discovered the demon in himself.

Born in the mid-nineteenth century to a family of itinerant circus performers, Jared didn't understand why his body grew so slowly or why his parents tried to hide him from the world. Through the years he discovered more disturbing things about himself—his unusual strength, the way his body healed with remarkable speed, and the "shadow people" who whispered dark and terrible things in his ear. Only music seemed to subdue their wicked urgings, and the prayers of his mother, the one person in his life who had loved him.

He soon came to realize that he was a danger to the world, and it would be better if he left it alone. But the more he tried, the more he was drawn into a whirlwind of darkness and evil from which he couldn't escape.

Book Takeaway:

Though Jared is a Nephilim and under a curse, I think a lot of his feelings of being born wrong and somehow unworthy of God's love are shared by us regular people. I want him to be relatable in that sense. His loneliness and isolation are feelings so many people in our world experience, especially those that don't know or have rejected God. I believe it why some people get involved in cults, which is something Jared ends up doing.

Why the author wrote this book:

I was working on book four of the series when Dawn, my publisher, suggested I write an origin story for Jared. I immediately set the manuscript aside and dove in. I'm so glad I did, because a lot of the things I "discovered" about Jared's past became very important in the writing of book four, "Forbidden."