When I joined ACFW, Ane Mulligan was a name and face that kept popping up. As zone coordinator, she was the go-to resource for everything while I was the treasurer for our local chapter, and she's a mentor and encourager to many. Please join me in welcoming Ane Mulligan and her debut, Chapel Springs Revival, to Fiction Faith & Foodies!
***
Chapel
Springs Revival is a work of fiction, and if you like to
laugh, you’ll it. After all, laughter is good medicine, and we should indulge
often. Best friends Claire and Patsy get in and out of more pickles than a
Vlasic cucumber. It’s a little bit like Lucy and Ethel go to Mitford.
But lest you think it’s all silliness, Chapel Springs Revival is also a book
with a message about faith and commitment in marriage.
And for the Foodies, there are a few recipes in the back
of the book. Poor Claire can’t cook. Her expertise maxed out at jello jigglers,
but her husband and friends are great cooks.
Here’s a short synopsis of Chapel Springs Revival:
With a friend like Claire, you'll need a
gurney, a mop, and a guardian angel
Everybody in the small town
of Chapel Springs, Georgia, knows best friends Claire Bennett and Patsy
Kowalski. It's impossible not to, what with Claire's zany antics and Patsy's
self-appointed mission to keep her friend out of trouble. And trouble abounds.
During an early morning
discussion at Dees 'n' Doughs bakery with their ladies group, all Chapel
Springs entrepreneurs, attention is drawn to the slackened tourist trade. With
their livelihoods threatened, they join forces to address the town's
revitalization in hopes of drawing back the tourists. No one could have guessed
the real issue needing restoration is their marriages.
Claire, a pottery artist,
stumbles through life with her foot in her mouth. When she became a Christian,
she thought life and her marriage would be included in the new creation part.
But her thighs are just as big and her husband, Joel, is as ornery as ever.
She's become nothing more than a sheet-changer, a towel-folder, a
pancake-flipper. Her life is humdrum and she's tired of being taken for
granted.
Patsy has plans for her empty
nest, plans that include a cruise ship. However, her husband, Nathan, continues
to work long hours, and he's not talking about slowing down. In fact, he's not
talking much at all. She's asleep long before he comes home each night. At
first she thought it was just because of tax season, but now she's not so sure.
Something other than work seems to keep him late at the office every night.
With the lines of communication closed, she'll have to find another way to
reach him.
With their marriages as much
in need of restoration as the town, Claire and Patsy embark on a mission of
mishaps and miscommunication, determined to restore warmth to Chapel Springs
—and their lives. That is if they can convince their husbands and the town
council, led by two curmudgeons who would prefer to see Chapel Springs left in
the fifties and closed to traffic.
Labels: Ane Mulligan, Chapel Springs Revival, christian fiction, faith and commitment in marriage, laughter is good medicine, Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas
