What’s Best for Them
An amazing, heart-tugging sequel to Dan’s bestselling novel, Twas The Night (but easily read as a Stand-Alone). It’s 1963, a new year has just begun. What’s Best For Them picks up the story of newly-orphaned Ransom and his sister, Emma, trying to adjust to small town life in Black Rock, North Carolina. This after spending the entirety of their lives growing up in the woods. While things in their new home with Theresa are going very well, almost nothing outside the home is. Deputy Bud Ellison steps in to help Theresa but challenges are springing up from every direction. Her family di lei ‘s objections di lei, bullies—even at church, a rigid school system unwilling to bend, and the worst and potentially most dangerous challenge is this lingering stranger who keeps visiting Black Rock diner, asking all kinds of questions about the kids.
Fans of Twas The Night , as well as The Unfinished Gift , What Follows After —and all of Dan’s novels reviewers so often compare to Nicholas Sparks and Richard Paul Evans—will absolutely love What’s Best For Them .
“What do you wanna be when you grow up?”
Kids get asked that question all the time. When my son was five, he knew. “I wanna be a green Batman.” By high school I knew. I wanted to be an author of novels. My composition teacher was the spark that lit this fire. She went out of her way to encourage my feeble offerings. “You could really be a writer if you wanted to,” she said. Secretly, I began to write poems and short stories. Only my teacher and mother could read them (such things clashed badly with the surfer-guy persona I’d worked so hard to fabricate at school).
After becoming a Christian, my attention shifted in a different direction. I met Cindi, my wife-to-be. Then came a call to pastoral ministry. Then fatherhood. I still loved to write, but found little time for it. In the mid-90′s, we decided I needed a relaxing hobby. Cindi suggested I start writing again. I read some great how-to books and found some wonderful friends on a Christian fiction writer’s board on AOL (back when AOL was the Internet). A year later, my first novel was complete.
It was soon picked up by a top literary agent, but she found it difficult to market. Not much interest back then in a faith-based suspense thriller with a military edge. Shortly after that, the idea for The Unfinished Gift came to me…. Read on.