The Books
Between Two Seas
In ancient times, Melitene is ravaged by violence, poverty, addiction, and unrest. The new governor, Trebonius, is charged by the emperor to bring stability to the island. He seeks the counsel of two leading Melitenians who represent diametrically opposed world views.
Solon is a humble seeker of his Creator. Alacerius believes only in man-made solutions, with himself in charge. Alacerius wins the governor’s favor and begins implementing his program of atheism, the corruption of morals, collectivization, coerced population control, and imprisonment or worse for all who oppose him.
Trebonius sends his seventeen-year-old son, Publius, to live incognito among the people to gauge how Alacerius’s reforms are affecting them. At the school in the main city of Mathos, Publius meets sixteen-year-old Amoenitas and her temperamental younger sister, Eletia. Publius and the two sisters soon find themselves entangled in a labyrinth of murder, deception, intrigue, real and misplaced romance, a prophetic dream about a messenger of hope, and historical events that affect the world to this day.
The players on the world stage have changed with the generations. Science has advanced. But one constant has always remained—the relentless struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness.
Podcast: Between Two Seas and The Courier by Robert Alan Ward
The Lifestyle Shoppe
Seeker, a young woman from the city of Commonplace, wanders into the Lifestyle Shoppe, seeking a life. The shopkeeper explains to her its three rooms: Broadway, Striveway, and Narrow Way. Seeker resolves to try out each room before deciding where to buy. On her journey through each room, she encounters people engaged in various attempts to discover that elusive commodity called happiness.
Told with the feel of a modern-day “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Seeker and other Lifestyle Shoppe characters, by the choices they make, ride a roller coaster to pinnacles of joy, both real and temporary, or plunge to the depths of anguish and sorrow. Plot twists throughout promise to keep the reader guessing as to how the story will end. The only certainty is that “sooner or later, everyone buys from The Lifestyle Shoppe.”
Forged from the Wilderness
The Lives of John and Elizabeth Bunyan
The England of the seventeenth century, with its political and religious turmoil, was really not so different from the America of the twenty-first. Since the fall in the Garden of Eden, there has always been God’s way and man’s. Hence the timelessness of John Bunyan’s allegorical masterpiece, “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” which first appeared in 1678.
Forged from the Wilderness is the story behind the book, the story of John Bunyan’s life and of a little-known woman named Elizabeth, whom God much used to help shape him into the man he was called to be. By earthly standards, theirs was an unlikely union. Yet she became the dedicated stepmother of his four children, a courageous champion for her husband’s freedom from prison, and a catalyst for the publishing of his works.
Through meticulous research, I have endeavored to capture the real John Bunyan, the real Elizabeth, the real hardships they faced, and the real England of their time. How they lived in their world has much to tell us about how we ought to live in ours.
The Courier
In the long-awaited sequel to “Between Two Seas,” “The Courier” takes up the story with the shadowy, cloaked figure sailing from the island of Melitene, leaving behind a path of misery and destruction. But though the young man has escaped the island, can he escape himself? Fifteen-year-old Eletia, pregnant and new to the faith, is wondering how she will raise her child alone, with the father nowhere to be found. Though the fledgling church on Melitene is thriving under the leadership of Publius and his wife Amoenitas, sinister forces are at work on the island, determined to destroy both freedom and the church. The centurion Julius, a follower of Christ, is charged with conveying Paul to Rome. He longs to leave the army and to settle down to married life. A certain young lady has caught his eye, but duty comes first. Inspired from the book of Acts and within the historical context of the first century church and its surrounding culture, “The Courier” spins a tale of rousing action, romance, intrigue, persecution, heartbreak, redemption, and triumph. How the first century followers of Christ dealt with their hardships informs how we who dwell in the twenty-first ought to live in our time, as we face the same age-old struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness.
Podcast: Between Two Seas and The Courier by Robert Alan Ward
The Gulag and the Dell
In this stirring sequel to “Through Fear and Trembling,” Athena Arnold becomes the new President of the United States in the wake of a hotly disputed election. Veiled in her rhetoric, but undeniable by her actions is a determination to stamp out all vestiges of biblical Christian faith in America, which she regards as toxic to society. Her aim instead is to force America into the global socialist New World Order.
William Walter Cunningham, her head of the Bureau of Government Affairs in New Washington State, dispatches the young, arrogant Ahmad Salazar to bring to heel the citizens of Green Valley, a small, God-fearing, mid-western community. Salazar ruthlessly forces his “control and compliance” policy on its citizens. Local Christian pastors Brandon Mills of the Green Valley Community Church and Roland Spafford of the Harvest Temple push back, setting up a clash between two diametrically opposed and irreconcilable worldviews.
Pastor Brandon’s rebellious teenage daughter Patricia finds herself pregnant out of wedlock, with the local family planning clinic determined to force her into an unwanted abortion. The resulting chain of events causes some believers to flee to the Dell, a hidden refuge deep in a dense forest northwest of Green Valley. Pastor Brandon is forcibly separated from his ailing wife Lisa and sent to the “Rough Acres Reeducation and Rehabilitation Camp,” a gulag in North Dakota that specializes in forcing hard cases into conformity with the edicts of the New World Order.
Courage, cowardice, treachery, heartbreak, healing, romance, and the sovereign hand of God; “The Gulag and the Dell” is a powerful story of redemption and of the ultimate victory of God and His people over the forces of evil.