Good Morning and Welcome back to another episode of Saturday Spotlight! It is with great pleasure I bring Heidi back to share her new release, Vision of My Heart, a standalone Christian historical romance and the final book in the Discerning God's Best series.
Welcome Heidi! The blog is all yours...
THANKS, Pam.
I'm not Serafina. I still have some sight left, enough to be dangerous behind a grocery cart, but nowhere near enough to have written her by imagination alone. Every scene from her point of view had to work through sound, touch, and smell. No sunsets. No knowing glances across a room. If I couldn't feel it, hear it, or smell it, it didn't belong on the page.
I closed my eyes more times than I can count while drafting this book, just to feel what a hallway or a porch step or a stranger's voice would tell me if sight weren't in the equation. It was humbling. It was also one of the most spiritually honest things I've done as a writer, because it forced me to trust, the way Sera has to trust, that there's more than one way to see clearly.
Vision of My Heart closes out a seven-book journey through Shumard Oak Bend. It asked something different of me than the other six did.
Enjoy this peek into Vision of My Heart...
Smallpox took Serafina Shankel's sight and the confidence she once wore as easily as her best dress. She meets her altered world with quiet dignity, choosing composure over complaint and refinement over pity.
Then a frontier storm strands her far from home, and Connor Finnegan finds her. The horseman's steady presence and dry humor unsettle a heart she has kept in careful order.
Connor has weathered enough loss to recognize it in others. He offers no rescue and no easy promises, only patience and a way of seeing that reaches past sight. He does not expect her strength to pull at him this hard, or how God uses their unlikely bond to wake hopes he thought long buried.
The future God offers may look nothing like the one either imagined. It may be sweeter.
Excerpt: Connor slid from the saddle and led Drum a few paces along the bank, boots sinking into damp earth. He bent to scoop water over his neck and shivered under its chill.
Then he saw them.
Boots. Small ones set neatly beside a flat rock with stockings folded atop them as if laid out for Sunday.
Bare feet rested in the moss, pale against the dark green, toes half-curled as though testing the ground for its welcome.
His first read of her was not inappropriateness. It was fragility.
He lifted his gaze to her face. She sat unmoving, face tilted toward the sun. He was just close enough to see a contented smile.
Drum snorted behind him, causing the dog to rise, hackles up at the scruff of its neck.
She turned her head directly toward him. The certainty of it made his mouth go dry. She could not see him, but she knew exactly where he stood.
"Who's there?"
Get your copy of
Vision of My Heart at
AmazonHeidi Gray McGill is a Selah Award finalist and five-time NEST Award-winning author of Christian historical and contemporary fiction. Her Discerning God’s Best series has earned over 3,500 five-star reviews on Amazon, where readers describe her work as “faith-filled fiction with flawed but lovable characters.” She began her writing journey in March 2020, after retirement, proving that God’s calling has no expiration date.
A sought-after encourager in the writing community, Heidi speaks and writes on the craft of storytelling, writing with biblical conviction, and reaching readers across generational and cultural divides. She is both independently and traditionally published, and she writes despite progressive vision loss, which has only sharpened her perspective on what it means to walk by faith and not by sight.
Connect with Heidi and receive a free prequel to her bestselling series at HeidiGrayMcGill.com.
Christian Fiction. Relatable Characters. Life-changing Stories. Fusing Faith and Fiction™
Wow... such a beautiful story and series! Thanks for sharing with us today Heidi!
Friends, if you haven't yet, check out Heidi's Throwback Thursday Page and find out all about this wonderful Discerning God's Best series.
Until next time, take care, God Bless and Read Happy!
PamT
