Linda Anne Smith – författare

Truth can be illusive, choices disconcerting; the promise of moral certitude, irresistible. 

In the Midwestern offices of Secure Star Insurance, Rebecca, efficient and distant, seeks only to survive another day. Sally, earnest and devout, views the workplace as a fertile mission field. Into the agency comes a new employee, Gladys, gregarious, unorthodox and twice divorced. When an intuitive HR manager arrives, veneers begin to crack.

To move beyond her smouldering estrangement Rebecca must come to terms with her past. Four years earlier she was Sr. Rebecca Marise, living in a convent replete with younger members and garnering the support of an increasing number of bishops and conservative Catholics. When an older nun has a heart attack, Rebecca is abruptly sent to a backwater mission in Appalachia. Distanced from the enclave of the motherhouse and embedded in social realities of the missionary outpost, Rebecca is thrust into uncharted waters.

Often through the shadows we more clearly see the light.

Andrew Covick, young and naïve, is offered a scholarship and leaves home for the first time. On campus, friendly senior students invite him to barbeques and other get-togethers. “This is great!” he thinks. “New friends, free food!” Andrew assumes there are no strings attached . . . until he begins to feel the tendrils. 

As Andrew seeks to disentangle himself from what he once thought to be a benign student organization, his girlfriend downplays his concerns.  Andrew watches, helpless to intervene, as she is slowly enticed into the cultish church Movement, the Proclaimers of Christ. No one except the scruffy literature prof seems the least concerned about the church Movement; after all, the student members are high-principled, well disciplined, and fill the pews during the campus services. 

Every time Andrew thinks he has put the organization behind him, he stumbles over another connection, discovering that the tendrils of the Proclaimers of Christ extend to the highest echelons of the church. 

From Andrew’s unsuspecting association with the Proclaimers of Christ during his college days to his startling, unsought involvement many years later, this fast-paced novel will keep you turning pages.

Dawn Through the Shadows reaffirms the resilience of the human spirit, our innate longing for authenticity, and the reach of love beyond remorse and rejection.

This is the second novel written by Linda Anne Smith. In her first novel, Terrifying Freedom, we are introduced to the withdrawn and enigmatic Rebecca Holden. Andrew Covick pries into her past and unearths a facet of her life that Rebecca has painstakingly concealed and sought to forget. Dawn Through the Shadows shifts to Andrew’s early years and reveals what made him so perceptive to Rebecca, why he was able to see beyond her brusque mannerisms to the wounded, empathetic person within. 

Although Dawn Through the Shadows is a sequel to Terrifying Freedom, it can be read as a stand-alone novel.