MY FAMILY moved to Meteor Ranch of Northern California in May of 1962. Back then, my sisters and I were eight, nine, and ten, me in the middle, Linda and I were about to turn ten and eleven.

The ranch was a family-run Christian Conference Center and Bible Camp, the mother in charge. She oversaw her husband, sons, and daughters-in-law, the staff, and whatever wards of the state she could take in for cash flow—to use and misuse we’d learn soon enough. I’d already pegged her for a sheep in wool’s clothes. After hiring Dad to come work for her at a pittance by bribing him with a “fully furnished house,” we discovered the house to be a stolen ranger station she’d had her sons saw in half and haul out of the hills.

I'M NOT SURE WHY why Christians persist in denying abuse—in their churches, in the families around them, in their own households.

“Not my church!"

"Oh, but he’d never…!"

"I know him!"

"The very idea," we say, a hard slap to the victim, abusing them further.

Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves cheerful giver."  —II Corinthians 9:7 (RSV)

PANDA WAS MY FAVORITE stuffie when I was five. That Christmas, the fire department collected old toys for the poor. Even though Panda begged I not give him up, the voice of my Sunday School teacher oerrode: "We never give God what we don't love. We give Him what we love the most."

I BOARDED THE FAST FERRY out of Skagway, AK, to see about a new job in Haines, driving tourists into grizzly country. I’d been coming north for several years as a tour bus driver. The Call of the North had tapped my shoulder.

Normally I drove tourists up White Pass out of Skagway, AK, a small town caught in a crevice between two ridiculously high mountain ranges, and then wound them down into the Canadian tundra, landscapes unrolling into boreal forests and glacial lakes. But the summer of 2014 I’d taken a job with the new company in town but with expectations that didn’t suit. A job posted on our grocery store bulletin caught my eye. Wild Adventures. Taking tourists out to a grizzly reserve. Why not?

REV. JOEL WEBBON OF COVENANT BIBLE CHURCH in Austin, TX, recently advocated for the execution of women who "lie" about sexual assault—citing Deuteronomy 19:16-21 as his text. “Hashtag Me Too would end real fast," he said. "All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied.”

Conservative evangelical Christianity seems to be falling prey to a rising movement that has forgotten the Gospel of Jesus. 

1st RULE OF THUMB when it comes to book cover fonts is no more than two. Why? It’s too much. It’s like reading amphetamines. All hopped up and chaotic and leaves you feeling a bit dizzy. You can sometimes get away with an italic of one font. But tread carefully.

Here’s a cover with four fonts. Graphic Design Basics by Amy E. Arnston is super cool for this artsy genre, but for the rest of us? Our fiction and memoirs? Not so much.

My first memory is of fear—and faith.

I am three. The month is May and cherry blossoms are in full bloom. My mother and father and big sister climb the high, very wide steps ahead of me. I dawdle in the hum of bees and a breeze. The door slams shut at the top of the stairs. I startle. I'm alone!