In less than a month my book will be released. That fact makes my heart skip several beats. I’m sharing teasers each week over on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. (Give me a follow if you want to stay in the loop.) Because I’m broke, that’s pretty much all the marketing I can do but more on that later. Today, I wanted to share a teaser and try to tell y’all why I wrote this story.

Restoration Road follows a young woman who, after one tragic event, lost everything. Her faith in the Lord. Her relationship with her family. Her life-long dream. One moment derailed her life and she fell apart. And one moment will put her back on track.

I wrote this story because that same thing happened to me. Not the exact same thing. But I did foolishly allow one big thing to derail my whole life and my faith. From childhood I wanted to make a living riding and competing with horses. When I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to stop growing I gave up the dream of being a jockey and moved on to the world of showing. And I chased that dream with everything I had. By the time I was in college I was even getting a degree in the horse industry. I had it all planned out. Then my Rheumatoid Arthritis gave up the whole hiding in the background thing and took over. I could barely walk from class because every inch of me hurt. It was a nearly overnight change. I went from healthy and athletic to crippled and sick in the blink of an eye. I fought to keep riding and showing. By the time I graduated two years later my RA was back under control. But the message I’d learned in those two years was clear. There was no way that I could put my body through the pounding you take as a horse person. Sure, I could have gotten some perfectly trained horse that I could just sit on and push the right buttons. I was never that kind of a rider though. I wanted to train young horses – I was good at it too. I tried to keep going but I was popping pain meds like candy and having to spend a week or better recovering from one or two days showing. I couldn’t consistently ride. I couldn’t even always lift my saddle or properly groom my horses. Just like that my dreams were crushed. I couldn’t have the life I’d planned for. RA took it away from me.

I wasted a lot of years being angry at God, thinking He’d done this to me for some reason. I cried and prayed, asking what I’d done. I begged Him to give me back my dream. I even begged Him to let me die. It was a very dark, very bad time in my life. It took me a very, very long time to get to a place of acceptance and understanding.

That’s why I wrote this book. In it, Mallie Jo Andrews has lost everything after a tragic car accident ruined her plans for the future. She lets her anger and depression push away her whole family. She lets it destroy her faith. When we met Mallie in the book, she’s on her way back to the Lord and her family. She just doesn’t know it yet.

My hope is that telling a story of a faith restored will help someone who might be in that same, lost faith situation. Maybe, just maybe, this story will help someone let go of their anger, frustration, disappointment, etc just a bit sooner than I did. If it does, this book will be a success.

Blessings!

~Elise