The Mosaic Collection: Eleanor Bertin | Guest Post + Giveaway

For His glory…

The Mosaic Collection is an international community of women authors who use faith-based fiction to touch hearts with the good news that Christ’s finished work on the cross has made us one family, and to nurture affection for the people God has placed within our circles of influence, so that the grace and glory of God may become visible and personal to everyone we meet.

…and our good

We are sisters, a beautiful mosaic united by the love of God through the blood of Christ. We have experienced the redemptive, restorative power of God’s grace in our marriages and families, and we believe our God is able to heal, restore and redeem our brokenness. His love fills us with the courage to persevere, and to offer others a Christ-like compassion that is full of His wisdom and grace.

GUEST POST FROM THE AUTHOR

Two things prompted me to write Unbound. I kept hearing from readers of my first novel, Lifelines, wanting to know “the rest of the story” for some of those characters. Then I discovered 20 handwritten pages of an unfinished novel I’d begun 35 years earlier. It was loaded with purple prose and some truly preposterous behaviour by a recently-bereaved character -- I was only an inexperienced 23-year-old when I wrote it! But I still thought the kernel of the idea had potential. I hadn’t intended a sequel to my first novel, but I began to wonder if I could write a stand alone companion book that would still include characters from the first. So I recycled the overwritten parts and corrected the bereaved mother’s attitude to be more in keeping with the permeating and life-altering grief I now know from experience.

My inspiration for a story is almost always some big idea, some essential theme surrounding God’s truth and character. Just as music can bypass the mind to affect the emotions, I believe fiction is an effective and gentle way to influence a reader’s mind by the power of story. In the case of Unbound, the underlying inspiration came from my own ever-growing amazement at God’s grace to the unworthy, namely me!

There are some parallels to the biblical book of Ruth in Unbound, but more than anything, its theme is encapsulated in Titus 3:4,5: “But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us…”


Jesse Fawcett, a minor character who has Down syndrome, is patterned after my own 23-year-old son, Timothy, who has Down syndrome as well as other folks with DS and the stories their families have told me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In a fit of optimism at age eleven, Eleanor Bertin began her first novel by numbering a stack of 100 pages. Two of them got filled with words. Lifelines, her first completed novel, was published in 2016, followed by Pall of Silence in 2017, a memoir about her late son Paul.

She holds a college diploma in Communications and worked in agriculture journalism until the birth of her first child. The family eventually grew to include one daughter and six sons (the youngest with Down syndrome) whom she home-educated for 25 years.

Eleanor lives with her husband and youngest son, Timothy, amidst the ongoing renovation of a century home in central Alberta where she reads, writes, sweeps up construction rubble and blogs about a sometimes elusive contentment at jewelofcontentment.wordpress.com.

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Cornerstone message from the collection: Launch out into the far reaches of the universe. Delve deep into the intricate wonders of creation’s minutest particles. The farther humanity goes, the more awe I feel at the God whose power and genius spoke it all into existence. As a very young girl, I relished the delicious thrill of feeling tiny in the face of vast power, whether under a giant prairie sky, or failing in my count of the sparkling night stars. Like holding hands with a grizzly bear, God’s thundering bigness against my feeble smallness terrifies and quiets me.

That shivery awe fills the pages of the Bible, where God’s mighty power and fearsome holiness are vividly on display. There I read of a majestic King, both perfectly holy and utterly sovereign. That’s the terror part! He governs every detail of history, and every detail of my life.

But layered within that message is the constant harmony line of God’s pure goodness and the astonishing message of His never-ending love in the sacrificial death of His Son Jesus in my place.

“And from my smitten heart with tears 

Two wonders I confess -- 

The wonders of His glorious love 

And my unworthiness.” 

(Elizabeth C. Clephane, Beneath the Cross of Jesus)

I’m flooded with joy knowing I belong to a trustworthy, loving God who forgives me and never leaves me!

GIVEAWAY

(1) winner will receive a $50 Amazon eGift Card & an ebook prize pack*!

Winner will receive an ebook of:

Where She Belongs

Pieces of Granite

Lifelines

Christmas on a Mission

Vigilant

Other Side of the River

The Third Grace

Carolina Grace

The Benefit Package (a devotional)

Dance of Grace

When Love Calls

Full tour schedule linked below. Giveaway will begin at midnight July 10, 2019 and last through 11:59 PM EST on July 24, 2019. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. Open internationally, but international winner will receive a gift card only (may be substituted for a Book Depository gift card if winner cannot accept from US Amazon)

Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.

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TOUR SCHEDULE

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