Book Review: To Dwell Among Cedars by Connilyn Cossette

Connilyn Cossette has brought another Biblical saga to life in the pages of To Dwell Among Cedars, a story of the Ark of the Covenant and of God’s judgment, His mercy, and the redemption and forgiveness of those who feel beyond His reach. In it, she pens a stirring romance between vivid characters that come to life off the page and are not easily forgotten. (She gives them the most awesome names!) There were moments that moved a little bit slow in the earlier part of the book, but the unfolding drama and suspense heighten as the story reaches the turning point and beyond. A beautifully written novel I enjoyed very much.

When a History Lover says concerning Historical Fiction: “What’s the Point?”

I read that remark on a social media post recently. Someone was talking about writing historical fiction, and a history buff, ghosting the page, asked, “What’s the point?” as if there was no real value in reading fiction as an expression of history.

Of course, if you love historical fiction like I do, his comment rankles you as it did me. The implication that fiction has no value, no place in the world of studying history, seems both sad and blinded, doesn’t it?

I know that people love historical fiction for different reasons, but let me tell you why I love it. 

When I was growing up, I thought I hated history. It was boring. It was names, dates, and events, all taught to me in a tangled up timeline that I could not make sense of. “History” seemed too vast and limitless for me to grasp. God created…and after that, things went in so many directions through such a spread of time that I couldn’t even fathom what was happening when and how these events all gelled together.

I graduated high school still thinking that I had no interest in history.

Then came historical fiction. Suddenly, by the deft pen of an able writer, a world opened to me. A world of history in context. A world where individuals moved through day-to-day lives, ate, slept, and loved. A world of people I cared about, even though they weren’t real—because the world around them was real. I began to understand the time periods and political upheavals representative of those eras. I started seeing what individuals who lived through them might have seen and I shared in their emotional experiences.

Without context, history meant nothing, and I could only learn little from it. But once it was peopled with individuals I cared about, it meant a great deal more.

Now to clarify, real people of history—the Ben Franklins and Marie Antoinettes, the peasants and kings, the scientists, explorers, missionaries, and poets, and all the other biographical individuals—I know they’re real. Yet even most biographies written about famous and infamous individuals lack the other important factor beyond what they did within their spatial context, and that’s how they behaved in an emotional context. Fiction allows us to see them (usually from the outside) but in an emotional context.

And that is specifically why I love historical fiction. While I understand that it is peopled with made-up individuals in pretend harrowing situations, it is also surrounded by the real, the ones who lived and walked among characters, the places and events that existed in which they had to survive. And that, my friends, has made me love history.

Why do you love historical fiction, or do you still not get it?

NOTE: This month is the last chance to sign up for my newsletter if you want to get in on next month's FREE READ, a novelette that is an expanded epilogue to Mist O'er the Voyageur and a prologue to my January 2022 release of the sequel Song for the Hunter.

 

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A cheerful heart is a good medicine (Prov. 17:22)

by Guest Author Carol McClain

The last chapter of 2020 closed a few days ago, but not without promising us more heartache in 2021. Our pandemic hasn’t finished with us, and we will find more grief and hardship for many more months.

Now, aren’t you glad you decided to read this blog piece?

But my prognostication comes with hope.

Find the humor.

The very act of smiling—even a fake smile—can change your mood. Go on and give it a try. We’re all in quarantine, so no one can see you grinning when you don’t want to (unless you have your Zoom video running. PLEASE, always remember, if your camera is on, colleagues can see what you’re wearing or not wearing).

For me, humor has been my mechanism for coping. A big zit on my nose? I don’t hide it with a burqa. I tell myself, “Own it, Carol. Make it work for you.” Or I ask for Ms. Pimple for rent. I recently read a cartoon that made me laugh. It is hilarious for this ex-pat New Yorker and the jab at the mighty Empire State’s governor. 

We can find laughter from the pandemic. And laughter is a good medicine. Not only did God tell us this. The Mayo Clinic confirmed it.

According to the Mayo Clinic, laughter has the following benefits:

1. Cachinnation stimulates many organs.

2. Chuckling activates and relieves your stress response.

3. Mirth releases tension.

4. Hilarity improves your immune system (Take that, COVID-19!).

5. Got pain? Get snickering. Pain will flee (or escape my escapades in the thesaurus, or my poet’s penchant for alliteration).

6. Glee increases personal satisfaction.

7. And proving my initial point, guffawing improves your mood.

Don’t take my word for it. Check out the article.

If you don’t trust the Mayo Clinic, do a concordance check on your favorite version of Scripture.

So, here’s my shameless self-promotion. Skip this portion if you have no interest in considering my book (or you don’t mind breaking my heart). All my writing, even when dealing with intense subjects such as child slavery, drug addiction or loss, is always dosed with humor. People return to me time and again and speak how my book made them laugh (even after they cried).

This week, I’ve re-released an old book now called The Perils of Cheryl. It’s a LOL novel about divorce, dating, and the divine. One reader said her husband repeatedly asked her what was so funny as she snorted and chortled in bed reading the novel.

Once more: Don’t take my word for it. Check out The Perils of Cheryl

Also, don’t take my word about humor being biblical. Here’s another reference from Proverbs.

“She is clothed with strength and dignity;  she can laugh at the days to come” (Pr. 31:25).

To find out more about Carol McClain visit: carolmcclain.com. Aside from laughing, signing up for my email makes me happy.

Happier still is the purchase of The Perils of Cheryl.

You can connect with McClain on Facebook at: facebook.com/author.Carol.McClain

On twitter and Instagram: @carol_mcclain

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

McClain is the award-winning author of four novels. The New York Yankee on Stinking Creek is the first-place winner of The Dragonfly Book Award for best novel.

McClain writes novels about the redemption of the unredeemable. Even her most serious works are laced with humor. She is a consummate encourager, and no matter what your faith might look like, you will find compassion, humor and wisdom in her complexly layered, but ultimately readable work.

She is a past president of ACFW Knoxville and its current treasurer/secretary. She facilitates Postmark Writers, an offshoot of the LaFollette Art Group. She teaches online courses and is a clinical supervisor for WGU.

In addition to the above, she’s served on the Board of Connections to Recovery, an organization dedicated to keeping addicts sober. She’s mentored recovering addicts, and at one time, had been a foster mother–the complexity and difficulty of that calling proved she was better off writing about it than performing it.

(Is there nothing she can’t do?)

Aside from writing, she’s a skilled stained-glass artist, and a budding potter.

She lives in Tennessee with her husband, kitties, and Springer spaniel, and soon will own a passel of Nigerian Dwarf goats.