P21The Curious Life of a Preacher's Wife

General: Market Definition and Narrative Voice Synopsis

The Curious Life of a Preacher's Wife is being written as historical fiction. As the author, I have a great deal of experience with preachers and their families. This is mostly due to the fact, that I grew up in the home of a preacher. Therefore, many of his friends were preachers, too.

Many of the locations in this book are places, where one or multiple members of my family have lived for a few weeks or for many years. The book is not being written as a biography or as an autobiography, but as historical fiction. It is not being written as a true account of actual events but as a novel, which incorporates places with which I am familiar as well as fictionalized versions of some events I have heard about as recounted by those, who lived them.

My target audience is rather narrow, being, that it is about a pastor/preacher and his family. However, I hope that application can be made with regard to other families in the helping professions, like counselors, teachers, first responders, doctors, and nurses. Those, who help others by profession, often find it difficult to capture "down-time" to help themselves and to spend quality time with their own families.

This present novel is being written to encourage a very specific group of senior adults, those, who are trying to reimagine life after the death of a spouse of many years. There are joys and challenges for every stage of life. This includes childhood, youth, young adult years, early marriage, married years with small children, and then youth, the empty nest, and senior singleness without one's lifelong partner.

The days of aloneness with one's dearest friend and spouse can tempt one to curl up into a fetal ball, and die, or sit in a rocker on the front porch, rocking away to nothingness, but by the grace of God, the last days on Earth can be some of the most productive when we focus on others and their needs rather than on the sadness of loss and aloneness.

Synopsis of Azul's "Curious Life": The people and culture of Paraguay have been such a gift to Fuerza, Azul, and their children over the past 40 years, but the death of Fuerza two years ago has made life in Paraguay difficult because everything and everyone reminds Azul of him. It's true, that the senior years are difficult days in which to move, to relocate, and to change one's life, especially if the move is hundreds of miles away into another nation, even if that nation is where one grew up, but at times the choice to move is easier than staying, enveloped in grief until grief takes away one's own life.

Azul's move and last days on Earth begin as a process of living life in reverse. She returns to Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas to relive many of those good days when she first met Fuerza on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. While there, she takes a side trip to the Oklahoma Panhandle, where they lived their early days of ministry together.

Finally, Azul makes her way back to Ashburn and Sycamore, Georgia, where she started life and lived into her twenties. Back then she was a farm girl, who worked long, hard hours in the field with her family. This taught her to love life in its most real form, from the Earth, and off the Earth. As she contemplates her return to the Earth, it's time to plant some pine trees, that will outlive her in Time, and to invest her life into the lives of those she loves and meets along the way. By this, she hopes to affect their lives into Eternity.

by Jay O’Toole
on October 25th, 2021