GASP! PRECIOUS JEWELS may contain sleaze!

Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga, might have been brought to you by an Adventist publishing house, but I am afraid that my family were a little bit too human.  Several reviewers in the publishing company recommended that the book be published as long as the "sleaze" was removed.   

"Out!" cried one reviewer.  "I want the sleaze removed!"

Sleaze?  In my book?!  Well…

I admit that perhaps my great-grandparents, Jtun and Pearl Holt, married too many times (although mostly to each other.) 

Then there's that troublesome compromising scene at Holt House in chapter five.  It's not explicit, but it is clearly conveyed what happened…and it was naughty.

In chapter six, things get complicated for Jtun and Pearl's daughters, Grace and Ruby, when their paths cross that of Yankee schoolteacher brothers.  And on we go, this family that is so prone to controversy!

"These people are sinning too much," I can imagine the reviewers worrying.  And perhaps more importantly, "Can this book be read aloud in a family setting?" 

My answer to both those concerns is to refer them to the Bible.  The Bible is read to children and it is not a book of saints. 

Excuse me?  Am I comparing my book to the Bible?  Well, yes, but not to say that is of equal import.  Specifically, I am comparing the family saga in Precious Jewels to the family sagas of the Bible.  There was some pretty big sinning in those Bible pages, but the power of the Bible stories is that those people had beliefs, and though they didn't always measure up, those beliefs defined them.

Despite the "sleaze," Precious Jewels is a faith-driven story of four generations of passionate people, torn between their hearts and the burning desire to do what God wanted them to do.  That is the story that I had to tell, and I couldn't tell it if I extracted the "sleaze." 

So the publishing company and I parted ways, although I think we both respect the stand of the other.  They have specifications that they must hold to as a denominational publisher, just as I have specifications that are important to me as a teller of stories about real people.