Christianbook.com Fiction Blog

From the time our kids were little, they insisted we read Misty of Chincoteague, about a wild horse living on Assateague Island over and over.  At 23 yrs old, my daughter still wanted to see the wild ponies; so on our way north we scheduled a day to find these “wild ponies.”  What an adventure!  First we hiked a couple of miles on one of the Virginia side National Park trails.  What we viwed were turtles, birds, a deer and her fawn and huge mosquitoes that seemd to be the size of horse flies, but no horses. We finally decided to ask a park ranger where they were.  On the Virginia side, the horses are managed by the local fire department and are usually corraled in a huge area.  Hoewever, there are also escapees.  We also tried to hike on another trail to find them in the farthest labryinths of the area.  When we were almost back to the car from our fruitless quest, there stood three wild ponies less than twenty feet from us.

After talking to the locals, we discovered that the Maryland side of Assateague Island is where the horses are truly wild, where they manage the park rangers not the other way around.  We didn’t even enter the Maryland side of Assateague National Park before we had 15 wild ponies meandering across the road right in front of us.  We stopped and got out of our car to take pictures only to have the whole herd follow us back to the car.  As we moved just a bit farther, there was a beautiful chestnut pony standing in the middle of the road.  As soon as he saw us, he meandered off, but not before making it clear with his neighing that we were intruding on his territory.  What a stop!  Did you know that it’s been over sixty years since the real Misty of Chincoteague was first released?  They have Misty stuffed in a museum in Chincoteague. Have you visited somewhere special that was inspired by a book you read or read to your children?

Have you ignored the Love Inspired Steeple Hill titles because you didn’t think they were good enough?  Truth to tell, I have, until recently.  What a surprise I had to discover a couple of
well-written in-depth books that I would highly recommend to my friends.  I just finished reading “Soaring Home” by Christine Johnson which is over 280 pages set in the early 1900′s when aviation was just in the fledgling stages. Based on historical fact, you get a glimpse into the extraoridany courage the pilots took everytime they flew a plane; how amazing that aviation was the one area where women were equal to men at that time; citing Amelia Ehrhart as a good example. The depth of the story indicated that we should definitely be watching for more titles by new author Christine Johnson.

On a side note, my friend has been reading Steeple Hill books for years but always claims they are for her cousin; the Steeple Hill books are actually written by some of your favorite authors who go by different pen names. They’re where many new authors are discovered and developed, including by other authors in the Christian writers community. The only thing that you may need are strong glasses because the print is small. Just try one, you may be in for a real treat!