New novel--Remembering Miss Addie--coming soon

[Lamar Wadsworth]

My new novel, Remembering Miss Addie, will be available around the end of May or early June in both print and e-book formats. Remembering Miss Addie, set in fictional Harrington and Mintz County, Georgia, is a sequel to my first novel, The Spirit of This Covenant. “Miss Addie” is retired teacher Addie Jane Peyton Aldridge, the most progressive-thinking person in Harrington Baptist Church, who lives by the adage, “If Moses had waited until everybody was ready, the children of Israel would still be in Egypt” (leading eight year old Deborah Estelle Westover to suggest that Moses should have had some adults like Miss Addie to help him with the children of Israel). Cassie McWhorter and Miss Addie have been best friends as far back as Cassie can remember, which would not be remarkable except for the 82 year difference in their ages. They are at once like two little girls and two little old ladies. In the first novel, on the Sunday that ten year old Cassie is baptized, 92 year old Miss Addie tells the story of her baptism in the creek at Bailey's Mill in 1908, and people remember it as the best sermon ever preached at Harrington Baptist Church. Miss Addie brought the people on the banks of Salyers Creek in 1908 and the people in church that morning together into one great cloud of witnesses for her young friend's baptism. When Cassie is fifteen, she tells her 97 year old best friend that God is calling her to preach. Miss Addie tells Cassie that she'd known that a long time. “I've prayed that you'd tell me before I die. That's why the Lord let me live this long,” she tells Cassie, “so I could tell you that you're not crazy for thinking that God is calling you to preach.” When Cassie is a senior in high school, Harrington Baptist Church licenses her to preach and promptly gets kicked out of the Mintz County Baptist Association.
Remembering Miss Addie begins with Miss Addie's death at the age of 101. Nineteen year old preacher Cassie McWhorter, a first semester religion major at Mercer University, honors her best friend's request that she have a part in her funeral. Miss Addie is buried in the cemetery at Peyton's Chapel Baptist Church, the oldest church in the Mintz County Association, where all of her family is buried. Through a turn of events quite possibly orchestrated by “Saint Addie,” this historic old church that has dwindled down to about twenty or so active members--most of them senior adults, many of them related one way or another to Miss Addie--calls Cassie McWhorter as pastor.
Although the central character, Cassie McWhorter, is a young female minister, the story is less about women in ministry than it is about an elderly person who finds meaning and joy as she invests her life and imparts her blessing to young people, and a struggling little country church that experiences renewal as it commits to helping a young minister get off to a good start. As Cassie's father tells her, “Peyton's Chapel didn't vote on women in ministry. They voted on Cassie McWhorter.”
Look for an upcoming publication announcement. It could sell into the dozens.

[KeithE]

Sounds interesting

[Dave Roberts]

Hope it will be very successful. It sounds interesting.

[Haruo]

I'll read it. Congratulations

[TrudyU]

Ed: Having read The Spirit of This Covenant and writing one of the first reviews of it, I am certainly looking forward to Remembering Miss Addie. And Trudy is also looking forward to it, she loved the first one.

[Stephen Fox]

Lamar, I posted your promo on my sister's facebook wall and told her the author is saying there is a character in this new novel based on or resembling my Dad, Billy D. Fox

[Lamar Wadsworth]

There is a character named Bob McKnight who is a minor character in the first novel, he's related to Cassie by marriage on her mother's side. In Remembering Miss Addie he is on Cassie's ordination council, and he and Cassie have a funeral together. Bob does indeed bear a striking resemblance to the late Billy Fox, one of the finest ministers of the gospel I have had the pleasure of knowing, and his voice sounds a lot like him, too.

I did have my characters interact with some real people. I knew the late Ruby Welsh Wilkins, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church at Wadley AL 1971-1984, first woman pastor of a Baptist church in Alabama. Ruby makes the trip up to fictional Harrington GA to help ordain Cassie. My friend Bob Ballance was editor of Baptists Today at the time the story takes place (1998). Bob's wife Catherine is also an ordained Baptist minister, so I have Bob and Catherine come down to Harrington for Cassie's ordination and for Bob to do a story for Baptists Today about Cassie and Peyton's Chapel Baptist Church. My characters also go to real places--Cassie and her roommate Mary Grace Tillison are students at Mercer, and people reminisce about taking Miss Addie to the big Sacred Harp singings at Bremen GA and Henegar AL.

[James]

I'm reading your first book now. It is a real experience. I bought the e-book version for the Nook. The file is all messed up. There were blanks is the file throughout the first have of the book. When I reached the last page about half way through the file, I found the missing segments. I'm enjoying the book even if it is not quite laid out the way I expect a book to be.

[Lamar Wadsworth]

The e-book version of my novel was produced almost 10 years after the print version, don't know why the file is. Orrupted since there have been no problems with the print version.

[James]

In a case like this one, a copy of the book is sent to Nigeria, disassembled and digitized. The people doing the job get paid about 50 cents per hour and probably do not read or even speak English.

[Lamar Wadsworth]

Working with a different publisher this time. Nurturing Faith is the publisher, their first venture into. publishing fiction.

[Lamar Wadsworth]

The contract with Nurturing Faith is signed, and the word from John Pierce and David Cassady at Nurturing Faith is that we'll be in print before the CBF meeting in June, so as to have it available there at BT/NF's display. Now, if I can just get Al Mohler to denounce it as heretical

[Stephen Fox]

If the family politics don't get to0 thick gonna lobby hard to get a copy in the Dykes Creek Baptist Church on the Kingston HWY, Rome Ga.

In honor of my Grandfather W.D. Shorty Fox, my Dad Billy D. Fox; Willard Willis and Jim McCrickard

[Lamar Wadsworth]

Wondering if Al Mohler or Paige Patterson would write a review denouncing it as heretical. Maybe get it banned from Lifeway book stores.

[KeithE]

[Lamar Wadsworth]

Update received today: the manuscript is in copy editing and will be going to typesetting in about 10 days. I'll be able to see the finished pages and cover design in 2 or 3 weeks.

[TrudyU]

[KeithE]

[Lamar Wadsworth]

I might just send Al a copy to review. Since I'm not dead, I probably won't be hearing Al say good things about me. I remain a classic example of a pre-Mohler SBTS alumnus.

[TrudyU]

[Lamar Wadsworth]

I have finished proofreading the typeset copy and made the final "speak now or forever hold your peace" corrections, just e-mailed everything to David Cassady at Nurturing Faith. Let the presses roll!.

[James]

Yesterday, I was present at the Baptism of two of my grandchildren. The minister who baptized them is a woman who obviously has a gift for preaching and for ministry. After the service, my daughter hosted a picnic at their home for family and friends and I had a chance to talk with the "father" of Westhunt Baptist church. The church has had a series of student and pastors in their first full time church. Bill said that he sees this nurturing of young pastors as part of the mission of this small church. If I had had a copy of Covenant I would have given it to him. Even though Westhunt is located a block off Broad St in Richmond there are similarities. Their previous pastor was a student at BTSR. Shortly after he graduated from BTSR, his wife got a really good job offer in Kansas. Her employer pulled some strings and got him a provisional appointment to a four church Methodist circuit which had been without a minister for months.

The way I see it this whole furball in which we live is connected by God's grace.

[Lamar Wadsworth]

James-- I think your folks would enjoy The Spirit of This Covenant, I think they will enjoy Remembering Miss Addie even more. In both books, a small country church commits to helping a young minister get started on the right foot. Ever since the first book, I have wanted to do something with the intergenerational friendship of Miss Addie and Cassie McWhorter. Of the two books, I think Remembering Miss Addie is the better book.

[James]

Thanks, Lamar. I'm looking forward to the book.

[TrudyU]

Ed: Lamar, Is there any chance that there will be copies available in Greensboro? I don't want to let Trudy spend all of her book allowance at the ABC Biennial the previous week if, Remembering Miss Addie will be available by the 28th of June. .

And Flick, I have meant to ask,what happened to the praying hands icon?