Innocents Pray by Lisa J Lickel - Five Star Review and Excerpt

Innocents Pray  - New Release

Lisa J. Lickel

Print ISBN 13: 978-0-9904281-0-7

ISBN 10: 0-9904281-0-9

$14.95

340 pp

Ebook 

ISBN-10: 0-9904281-1-7

ISBN-13: 978-0-9904281-1-4

$4.99

Release: September 1, 2016

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Justice, mercy, and humbleness collide when four people pray for different answers to the same situation. How will God answer all of them?

What is wrong with trying to cure cancer? Brother Able, hospice chaplain, asks himself that question every day. His boss, Dr. Rich Bernard, performs closet genetic experiments at Paradise House. He blackmails Able into keeping his secret. When a grieving husband asks Able to pray for his dying wife, Able finally breaks his silence.

Libby Davis might be prepared to accept death, to sacrifice herself for Rich’s greater cause but fails to comprehend the love of a husband who cannot let her go and the son who’s a whisper from the edge of reason. Brother Able wades into battle for those innocents in her life. If he wins, it won’t be only Libby’s family he saves.

FIVE STAR REVIEW OF INNOCENTS PRAY 

The question is: They’re praying, but how should God answer? And whose prayer?

Innocents Pray carries a varied cast of characters, but each is important, and each has their own spot to play in this novel from:

Brother Able the hospice chaplain, who has his own troubled past

Dr. Rich Bernard, a researcher, and a caring, yet determined person

Victor and Libby Davis: one sympathetic and sacrificial to Dr. Rich Bernard’s mission and the other so in love and hurt.

Jordan, troubled, hurt, and only a snap away from serious trouble

And then, there’s the website posts.

Lickel does a powerful job of creating the subtle tension throughout the story, increasing it chapter by chapter until all the events, all the emotions collide--not in some tornado-like storm, but in an even deeper, emotional collision that is shocking and extremely mind-blowing in its depth.

Choices have consequences, and each of these characters will either learn from those choices or suffer the consequences.

One of those books that doesn’t leave you easily and keeps you thinking long after you’ve read it. Highly recommended. 

--Carole Brown, author of the Award-winning The Redemption of Caralynne Hayman, and several mystery/suspense series

EXCERPT OF INNOCENTS PRAY

When I think back on my death and life, I recall Jordan’s eyes in perfect detail. I realized that, as his mother, I should have known, should have understood him. But if I had, I wouldn’t have lived.

Events were changing too fast for me to control that morning, I realized, as I lay trapped in the nether moments between sleep and wakefulness. Jordan’s eyes were black holes threatening to pull me in. I knew that if I let that happen, I’d be lost forever.

He wanted me gone. I’ve known that for the last three years. This time he might get his wish.

Shaking, I came fully awake. When I saw the clock, I knew I would have to pull myself together in a hurry so I could say good-bye before Nona took my son to school. At fourteen, it was easier for him to be seen with anyone but his mother. The tingle in my left thigh that bothered me on and off for the past six weeks turned into a throb as I made my way down the stairs. In the kitchen, I heard Nona quiz him about homework and the contents of his backpack. Good, she would cut him no slack.

She thrust a cup of coffee into my hands as I shuffled in. I greeted her and Jordan, who looked at me with a smile that went no further than his father’s dimples. Could he see my fear? Smell it or feel it?

“Morning, Libby,” Nona said. “I took a message off the machine earlier. Mrs. Rodgers asked you to make matching napkin rings for the coasters she ordered last year.” Nona shrugged into her jacket and jingled the car keys. “I left the note at your table.

“Thank you. Have a great day, Jordan. I love you,” I said to my son’s back. I’d been lobbing “I love you” at him for eighteen months. So far, he hadn’t cracked and sent one back.

*~*~*~*

Author Lisa Lickel is a Wisconsin writer who lives in a hundred and sixty-year-old house built by a Great Lakes ship captain. A multi-published, best-selling and award-winning novelist, she also writes short stories and radio theater, is an avid book reviewer, blogger, a freelance editor, and sometimes magazine editor. Visit http://www.LisaLickel.com.