Beauty From the Ashes ~ A Novel

Modern-day ANGRY HOUSEWIVES EATING BON BONS meets THE WALK Series. Thirty-year-old and newly widowed, Claire Adams discovers God’s plan is sometimes like a roller coaster. When she receives a gift from beyond the grave, she moves across the country to her home state, Louisiana. New friendships form, giving her the support, laughter & life-altering experience needed for healing.

The future Claire Adams had always envisioned is suddenly ripped away from the realm of possibilities with the diagnosis of a terminal brain tumor in her husband. The searing pain of learning how to live in a world that no longer contains the love of her life is, at times, too much for the thirty-year-old to bear.  After an unexpected nudge from her late husband, Claire decides to move back to her home state, Louisiana where she reconnects with her childhood friend, Julia Cooper, and is introduced to her friends.

Julia is an exhausted stay-at-home mom who tries her best to keep everything and everyone in order. The day she poured Cheerios into her cup of ice intended for her morning Diet Coke was the day she began questioning her life choices. Meg Price is a photojournalist whose office was once the world. Today, she finds herself in a place she never dreamed. A life with a husband, a mortgage, and a baby on the way. Eva Brooks is in the midst of trying to figure out how to juggle the needs of her children, husband, friends, and home all while maintaining her job as a marketing director.

Claire's relief burst open like a can of buttermilk biscuits when she finds undeniable chemistry and forms a sisterhood with each woman. When death and another health-crisis plagues the group, their uncanny ability to replace fear with laughter echo their faith in God and Proverbs 31:25. For Claire, each life-altering event helps connect one more dot in her journey to healing. Through it all, she discovers when you live a life guided by child-like faith in God, it's possible for beauty to rise from the ashes.

**At this moment, BEAUTY FROM THE ASHES is an unrepresented Women's Christian Fiction novel undergoing its umpteen-millionth round of revisions. I aim to have the manuscript in a condition to begin querying agents and publishers by Fall 2018.