International Christian Book Awards in recognition of Excellence in Christian Authorship!

Luke slammed the front door. He stormed to his car. His car was a little Honda Civic Papa bought him when he turned sixteen. He drove toward the highway as heat waves rose off the road in the scorching summer morning. These last days of August were the hottest Phoenix had experienced in a few years. The extreme heat in Arizona summers caused weird wavy mirage lines. Very often the temperatures could be over one hundred degrees by ten a.m. Even the northernmost highways in the State were sizzling hot.
From the front porch, Theo watched the dust blow up off the driveway as Luke roared down the road. Shaking his head in disgust, he turned away to his work.
Papa’s once strong frame slowly wilted after Luke drove out of the driveway that day. Like the sensitive plants Mother nursed in front of the porch, he struggled against the heat of Luke’s wrath.

Two years before the Civil War, new graduate from New York’s Auburn Theological Seminary, Markus Petersen and his new bride, Meggie travel south to settle in Maysville, Kentucky where Markus will become assistant pastor at the local church. Once there, they get caught in a tumult of war between the Union and the South.

Markus’s faith in God’s commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, and his strong Christian morality lead him to side with the Abolitionist movement. Assisting his friend, John Lane, Jr., they spirit slaves to the north via the Underground Railroad.

In doing so, he risks everything, his new wife’s safety, and his own life. MEMORIES OF WAR is one family’s tale of hope and courage during a tragic time in America’s history.

Running from the South to the North looking for their freedom, Joe and Berutha Petersen held hands as they stood with other slaves in the shadows of the peach trees near the Ohio River bridge just outside of the town of Maysville, Kentucky. The conductor walked up to his associate, already there keeping the small group quiet. As he gave them final directions for their trek the new conductor recognized Joe and Berutha, and nodded at them while he handed out a small quantity of supplies to everyone.

Berutha’s heart pounded in her chest in anticipation and trepidation about the escape.

In My Soul Awaits—Book Three of the Memories of War Stories—Connie is left with her cruel husband, Clinton as the wagon train travels on to San Francisco. There Connie must figure out how to survive in a cruel city fraught with people striving to endure hardships after the 1849 Gold Rush. Connie’s husband, intent on finding gold, leaves Connie alone and to her own devices in a fish monger’s shack. His uncaring attitude causes Connie to decide she must care for herself, and she digs down and finds unplumbed and unused notions, becoming successful without his help. At the same time, hazards await Connie and her friends as they wind their way through society, an unforeseen accident happens, and devilish men make life in San Francisco difficult, but with assistance from an old friend, Connie makes her way and becomes self-sufficient, finally finding the home and love she has missed thus far.

After a heart-breaking, tumultuous divorce, Ruth Adams runs to Cheyenne, WY, to begin her life anew. Her dream to own her own home, a business, and perhaps a fresh, new romance only leads to trouble. What about her family in Phoenix? Will they understand Ruth’s desire to go on a walk-about? Will her new friends, her new church, and perhaps a dreamy new man lead to the new life Ruth pines for? Or will the entire enterprise end in disaster?

In the late 1800s, Miriam Baalbeky emigrated from Baalbek, Lebanon. Only about thirteen years old, she was torn from everything she knew for a new life in the United States of America.

How will Miriam fare as she learns a new language, a new culture, and what does her future hold as she finds out the plans her sister and brother-in-law have for her?

Will her heritage–her legacy be one of love and triumph? This is a biographic novel, full of hope.

Death at Hell’s Canyon Quarry—Detective Alan Anderson, late of the Dallas, Texas police force, but now in Ash Fork, Arizona, is handed a case about a woman found floating in Hell’s Canyon Quarry. Her death, deemed accidental, is suspicious. All leads go cold, and the case is filed away. Three years later, a spate of deaths, all similar, occur. Still looking accidental, Detective Anderson has deja’ vu, feeling these can’t all be accidents. Do we have a serial murderer? How are these people linked together? Why would anyone want them dead? How does his team, including Becky Tsosie, a Navajo college student, figure out who the murderer is? (By TJ Boyer and Elizabeth Ajamie-Boyer in a startling collaboration of concepts.)

Detective Allen Anderson, and his assistant, Rebecca Tsosie, are on a new adventure to solve another serial murder in their small town of Ash Fork, Arizona. Rebecca is in her last semester at the NAU branch at Yavapai College in Prescott. She hears about murders happening there. Young men who went to Ash Fork High School are found dead. She and Detective Allen begin assisting the Prescott Police Department to ascertain who may be involved, what the motive is, and whether or not they can help before more young men are killed.

A Journey of Faith: When I wrote my first blog/chapter I knew my Mom would die soon. Dad had passed in 1996, and now she was following him, both of terrible diseases brought on mainly due to life choices. Mom passed away December of 2016.
At that time, I thought I would never get cancer. No one in our family ever had it, outside of some minor skin type cancers. I ate, yes still eat, healthy. I exercised.
Yet, I was chosen for such a time as this.