So why am I participating in a blog tour + giveaway + review of an overtly-Christian novel?

Well, because I read it. And enjoyed it.

Before I even received the book for review, the tag line had intrigued me:

“She’d leave her husband…if she could find him.”

Now THAT’S a sentence you don’t read often in the religious section of the bookstore.

Then within the book:

One of his suit jackets is facing the wrong way on the hanger. Everyone knows buttons face left in the closet. Correcting it is life-or-death important  to me at the moment. There. Order. As it should be. I smooth the collar of the jacket and stir up the scent of Aspen for Men. The boa constrictor around my neck flexes its muscles.

What’s this? Simple, elegant symbolism?

And:

The phone rings. I check the caller ID screen, expecting to see the French words for ‘No Tell Motel.’ Isn’t the word morgue French already?

It’s one of the other coordinators on the prayer chain. Lord, this better be more significant than Myrna’s cat’s digestive problems again or I may have to develop a swear language.

Was that HUMOR? Might I even call it SNARK?

I am ALL OVER this novel.

(By the way, I read it almost in one sitting. Not a long or difficult read, but definitely one that drew me in and kept me there until the last page. And that I had to stop reading at one point in Starbucks to avoid the embarrassment of public tears.)

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

(Wausau, WI) – At the foundation of each relationship resides the need to know love can survive even when feelings fade. In Cynthia Ruchti’s debut novel, They Almost Always Come Home, readers feel the desperation of this foundational yearning in a marriage clearly pulling loose from its moorings. Compounded by other issues—an unrewarding career and mismatched dreams—it’s enough to drive a man into the arms of the Canadian wilderness. When Greg Holden doesn’t return home from a wilderness canoe trip, his wife Libby wrestles with survivor guilt, a new layer of grief, and the belief that she was supposed to know how to fix her marriage. She planned to leave him—but how can she leave a man who’s no longer there? He was supposed to go fishing, not missing.

Libby has to find him before she can discover how their marriage ends. She plunges into the wilderness on an adventurous and risky manhunt, unsure what she will do if she finds him…or if she doesn’t. She expects to meet hardship, discomfort, and danger in the wilderness. She doesn’t expect to face the stark reality of her spiritual longing and a faint, but steady pulse that promises hope for reviving her marriage. If Greg’s still alive.

They Almost Always Come Home provides a glimpse into common, however uncomfortable, marital conflicts. Cynthia weaves a page-turning story, suspense building scene by scene. Her characters mirror ordinary people, living real-to-life situations, allowing readers to relate and sort through a myriad of emotions and life decisions. If fiction can contain adventure, riveting self-awareness, and romance all between the same covers, this is the book!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cynthia Ruchti writes stories of “hope that glows in the dark.” She writes and produces The Heartbeat of the Home, a syndicated drama/devotional radio broadcast, and is editor for the ministry’s Backyard Friends magazine. She also serves as current president of American Christian Fiction Writers. Cynthia married her childhood sweetheart, who tells his own tales of wilderness adventures.

The Interview:

1. How would you describe your book?

The tagline for the book is “She’d leave her husband…if she could find him.”

When Libby’s husband Greg doesn’t return from a two-week canoe trip to the Canadian wilderness, the authorities write off his disappearance as an unhappy husband’s escape from an oatmeal marriage and mind-numbing career. Their marriage might have survived if their daughter Lacey hadn’t died and if Greg hadn’t been responsible. Libby enlists the aid of her wilderness-savvy father-in-law and her faith-walking best friend to help her search for clues to her husband’s disappearance. What the trio discovers in the wilderness search upends Libby’s assumptions about her husband and rearranges her faith.

It’s my prayer that this fictional adventure story and emotional journey will reveal its own hope-laden clues for those struggling to survive or longing to exit what they believe are uninspiring marriages. How can a woman survive a season or a lifetime when she finds it difficult to like the man she loves?

2. How were you different as a writer and as a person when you finished writing They Almost Always Come Home?

This book changed me in a profound way. It forced me to take a more honest look at myself and my reactions to crises so I could write Libby’s character with authenticity. Libby is a composite of many women. I haven’t experienced what she did, but I identify with some of her struggles and longings, as I hope my readers will. I see my friends in her eyes and know that her tears aren’t hers alone. Her shining moments feed my courage. Libby speaks for me and for many others when she discovers that she is stronger than she realized and weaker than she wanted to admit.

Writing her story was a journey for the author as much as for the character.

3. When did you feel the tug on your heart to become a writer?

My journey toward a lifetime of writing began by reading books that stirred me, changed me, convinced me that imagination is a gift from an imaginative Creator. As a child, I read when I should have been sleeping…and still do. I couldn’t wait for the BookMobile (library on wheels) to pull up in front of the post office in our small town and open its arms to me. Somewhere between the pages of a book, my heart warmed to the idea that one day I too might tell stories that made readers stay up past their bedtimes.

4. What books line your bookshelves?

My bookshelves—don’t ask how many!—hold a wide variety of genres. The collection expands faster than a good yeast dough. I’m a mood reader, grabbing a light comedy one day and a literarily rich work the next. Although I appreciate well-written nonfiction, I gravitate toward an emotionally engaging contemporary women’s fiction story.

NOW FOR THE GIVEAWAY:

And this is creative. Instead of just a book to give away, the publishers have prepared a “themed” gift bag:

To enter in the giveaway, just leave a comment on this blog between now and June 18. On that date, I’ll choose at random the name and email address of one commenter. Then I’ll forward it to be entered in the grand prize drawing.

(Note: You’re much more likely to find out if you won if you actually enter an email address when you comment. You don’t expect us to launch a search party for YOU, do you?)

A VERY IMPORTANT P.S.

They Almost Always Come Home is available
on Amazon’s Kindle right now for FREE.
So if you have a Kindle (or Kindle app for some other device),
hop on over to Amazon to download while it’s still there!

Originally posted at: The Red Clay Diaries

Copyright 2007-2010. Use only with permission.

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They Almost Always Come Home, by Cynthia Ruchti (my first blog tour!)