I have wrestled and resisted and walked away from finishing the third and final book of a trilogy that I started years ago. I have started, I’ve announced, and I’ve backed out. I apologize. I was trying to produce something before it was time, like a premature birth that had to be placed in a makeshift womb until health and full development was complete, book 3 has been incubated.

A few years ago, I started to open the isolette, only to meet roadblocks, hesitations and a pandemic that required my mental space be exacted elsewhere. It wasn’t time. I closed my laptop and kept it shut to the possibility of birth, like a shut up womb. Only she was there, deformed, underdeveloped and perfectly safe inside a file in my computer. I left her there and carried on about helping others by starting a podcast “Sifted Wheat” (you can find the link on the home page) while also helping others to write and narrate their own stories, many laced with the same grief and struggle that Oona suffers.

I have a special place for her – the determined enemy of book 1 and begrudged presence in book 2, and finally in book 3, an unlikely heroine. If you haven’t read the first books, don’t assume you can’t pick up with the final. Oona is a story in and of herself. She combines the personalities of the books before to culminate in her story, planned from the beginning, to be the brightest reflection of redemption and the heart of the church, as it was intended to be, and as it struggles to love well.

So, this third book is for all of us. It is meant to remind us what we do right and what we do wrong and what we need to do- what God is calling us to do- better. It’s a narrative of grace and mercy told through the painful story of young woman who only ever needed love and who finally found it in a place that her world tried to convince her it wouldn’t and couldn’t happen.

Join me as we meet back up with the crew we’ve come to love. It’s time. Zella, Celeste, Robbie and Toby are waiting for you to read Oona’s story. Set to release at the end of this year.

Book 3: Oona, Dos, Tres

"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lamentations 2:22-23

*All subsequent posts on my blog will be the unfolding of Oona’s story. Each chapter preceding the next, the latest pinned at the top of my blog until the release of the next the following week.