This year’s Frasier Contest has come to a close. The finalists and semi-finalists have been announced, and we are all eagerly awaiting the Pizza Party to find out who the winner is. In the mean time, lets meet one of the Judges that made it all possible: Patti Hill, with her new book Goodness and Mercy.

Q: Patti, give us a tag line and a little blurb about your story.

A: Mercy is heartache comforted, a truth whispered, a healing granted. And sometimes, mercy comes at the worst possible moment. At least, Lucy thinks so.

After the death of her parents, sixteen-year-old Lucy Richter struggles to keep a promise to her father–to save what remains of her family. Lucy fails tragically but won’t allow her dwindling family to disappear. She shanghais her twin siblings, Goody and Mercy, from a Wisconsin orphanage to a Colorado peach ranch and an aunt who is a less-than-welcoming stranger. Lucy is prepared to keep the peace with her aunt, but will her sister’s gifts draw unwanted attention and crush Lucy’s dream of family?

And World War II rages on. Absent men strain the running of Honey Sweet Ranch and force alliances of the most intriguing and unlikely kind, including German POWs. Within these relationships, Lucy is given the chance to discover an unfamiliar and healing faith.

Q: Patti, what is one piece of advice you can give the MBT community?

A: Back when Goodness & Mercy was just a seed of an idea, tough times had hit the Hill household and seemingly the households of everyone we loved. In my morning Bible reading, I turned the page to Psalm 23. I’ve read books about that psalm and heard many a sermon, but that day I read the phrase “goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life” and stopped.

Really?

Goodness and mercy?

All the days of my life?

Every single, not-one-moment-skipped, day of my life?

Either I hadn’t received my allotment of goodness and mercy, or I didn’t understand what the psalmist meant. Since I could not argue against God’s love—too much evidence of His faithfulness over too many years—I figured I’d missed something.

Goodness is God’s provision, most specifically and wonderfully in His Son, Jesus. He is the provision of a loving Shepherd and perfect sacrifice for my sins, all in One. I am forgiven, loved, and lavished upon daily. Every day. No days skipped.

I learned in Sunday school that mercy is the withholding of a deserved punishment.  And since I’m God’s number one sinner—move over, Paul!—this is good news. But mercy is more. It’s also the withholding of the shame and guilt that goes with that sin. And mercy is a love so pure, so eternal-minded that it becomes a door to my life for transformational suffering.

But Goodness & Mercy is not a story about me. It’s Lucy’s story. And I drag her through a world of hurt—the loss of her parents, betrayal, and a sense that she’s the one to blame—all to discover that goodness and mercy is hers in Jesus, and, of course, to pass it on. I pray my readers embrace what is theirs, too.

***

Patti Hill is an unlikely novelist. Books played only a small part in her life until her high-school years. And she only remembers her mother reading to her once.

Always resistant to sleep, young Hill created stories to entertain herself until stories of galloping Arabian stallions and pirate ships segued into dreams.  That was the beginning. Then she discovered people enjoyed hearing her stories—real or imagined. She loved having an audience.

She didn’t think to write a story until she read a novel so beautiful that when it ended, she was bereft.  A passion to orchestrate words, characters, and stories consumed her. Fortunately, she’d married a man who thought leaving a good-paying career to write novels was a splendid idea. In other words, she is a kept woman.  Happily so. In Colorado. She is the author of six novels. Writing is one way she worships Papa God.