The Blackberry Bush

A story with the power to change the direction of your story.

—
L
EONARD
S
WEET
,
best-selling author, professor, speaker

Some books make you silent.
Some books give you goosebumps.
Some books change your life.
The Blackberry Bush
…it’s one of those books…read it!

—
G
EERT
K
IMPEN
,
best-selling European fiction author of
De Geheime Newton

A delightful blend of the historical events of the twentieth century and the coming of age of young people, both physically and spiritually. You’ll come away feeling more spiritual, believing in angels, and that good trumps evil. This book will lift your heart and fill you with hope!

—
R
ALPH
M
OORE
,
Founder of the Hope Chapel Movement

I live in this book and care desperately for these people.

—
D
ANA
H
ANSON
,
Pastor, LIFEhouse Church (Los Angeles)

David Housholder cooks up a great stew in his novel
The Blackberry Bush
. He mixes Old Europe, contemporary California, international headlines, youthful passion, and Christian spirituality to create a story that warms the heart and forces you to think about who you are, where you came from, and why life is never, ever accidental.

—
J. L
EE
G
RADY
,
author and journalist

The Blackberry Bush
proves that there really is more to life than what we see on the surface.

—
T
AMMY
D
UNAHOO
,
General Supervisor, The Foursquare Church

Housholder delivers a gripping, globetrotting, multicultural story—one populated by real people caught up in forces they could not possibly comprehend who find redemption and meaning through a personal encounter with a spiritual reality beyond themselves.
The Blackberry Bush
will show you the way out of your own thorny thickets of life into a place of genuine spiritual freedom.

—
B
OB
R
OGNLIEN
,
Senior Pastor, Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd (Torrance, California) and author of
Experiential Worship

With his novel
The Blackberry Bush
David Housholder has given us a brilliant work of coming-of-age fiction that not only captures and holds the attention of the reader, but seduces us into an exploration of the possibilities of hope and meaning in a vacuous and spiritually bankrupt world.

—
B
RIAN
Z
AHND
,
Senior Pastor, Word of Life Church (St. Joseph, Missouri) and author of
Unconditional?

DAVID HOUSHOLDER

Summerside Press™
Minneapolis 55337
www.summersidepress.com

The Blackberry Bush
© 2011 by David Housholder

ISBN 978-1-60936-116-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

English Scripture references are from the King James Version of the Bible.

“
De afgrond roept tot den afgrond.
” From the Dutch Staten Vertaling of the Bible, 1635. Psalm 42.

“
Jesu, HERR, gedenke an mich, wenn du in dein Reich kommst!
” From Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible, 1545.

Cover design by Faceout Studios, Charles Brock
Cover photo © Paul Knight/Trevillion Images
Author photos © Shannon McMannus
Interior Design by Müllerhaus Publishing Group |
www.mullerhaus.net

Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker

Some locations depicted in this book are real places, but the story is entirely fictional. All resemblances to actual people (other than ones noted in the author’s acknowledgments) are purely coincidental.

Summerside Press
™
is an inspirational publisher offering fresh, irresistible books to uplift the heart and engage the mind.

Printed in USA

For
Marinus Vermeer and J. E. Danielson,
whom my wife, Wendy, and I miss a great deal.
We are still carrying their torches.

Thanks to everyone, and there are hundreds of you, who made this first novel of the series possible. A novel is a quilt with many borrowed insights and ideas.

Props to Rolf and Mary Garborg at Summerside Press, who believed in me and got this project going, and their superlative next generation team of Carlton, Jason, and Joanie, who together with others lead Summerside Press.

No character in this novel correlates to a person in the “real world” except for two. Gemechis and Lindsey are delightful characters that appear briefly in the epilogue and are indeed based wholly on two fascinating real people: Gemechis Buba and Lindsey Trego. Some celebrities and public figures do appear in the book, either in passing or as cameos, but that’s only to keep the story stapled to the real world in which Josh and Kati grew up.

All the rest are composite characters based on at least a half dozen tiny bits and pieces of people I’ve observed over the years. Their names have nothing to do with real people. So, if you see yourself in this book, well, you’re seeing things.

Thanks to my wife, Wendy, who thinks I can do anything. That helps a lot. More than you think.

Thanks to Steffen Kopetzky, writer of one of my fave novels,
Grand Tour.
One of the main characters from his book, the mythic Ziffer watch, needed a bit of a resurrection. It was too good to leave in literary limbo.

Blessings on David and Linda Housholder (no relation, remarkably), who lived in South Asia for a full generation and gave me the ideas for Zara’s family.

Thanks to Robinwood Church of Huntington Beach, California (
RobinwoodChurch.com
), which provided the venue over the years for developing the spiritual themes underlying the story. This indie-warehouse-beach-church has a heart for changing the world. We probably will—because we believe we can. We have a worldwide following on iTunes podcasts. Have a listen.

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Hope Lutheran Church on Melrose in LA for hosting some of the most important scenes of the story. Ditto for the Evangelische Gemeinde Oberwinter in Germany and the Hillegonda Kerk in Hillegersberg, Holland. Please visit all these churches on Sunday morning if you are nearby. The latter two churches have been torch-carriers for many, many generations.

Thanks to my wonderful test-readers: Justin Burtis, Addie Coffman, Peter Stevens, Lindsey Trego, Luke Allison, and Madi Hankins.

Thanks to Ramona Tucker, editorial athlete, who created lucidity and clarity out of…well…my writing. She also provided many of the plot ideas.

Thanks to Ken Blanchard, of
The One Minute Manager,
who convinced me to start writing a couple of years ago.

Thanks most of all to that baritone voice Kati describes in the epilogue of this novel. Compared to him, the rest of us are just footnoters.

And thanks to Jim Rosenthal, who used to eat wild blackberries with me while on jogging runs outside of Chimacum, Washington.

Sooner or later in life we all discover that something in us is broken—and that there’s an empty void we want filled with pure, unconditional love and acceptance. We all long for a way out of the trap of meaninglessness…a way to be reborn into a new life of purpose and freedom.

The Blackberry Bush
is a beautifully written novel of two characters’ search for meaning and their powerful rescue from the relational and societal expectations that are crushing them. It’s the story our own hearts might tell from our journey through life.

I identified most with the character of Kati. Like her, I eventually heard God’s voice after going through some difficult years with bullies and people who couldn’t accept me as I was. I had to discover and accept the truth that all of me—my past, my relationships, my experiences, and gifts—is meant to be used for a purpose larger than just myself. David Housholder also reveals the importance of our backstories—the legacies from our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents that influence who we are and what we become. It was an encouragement to me to look at both painful and fortuitous events from my past as I work to weave past, present, and future into a whole.

But I also found myself embracing Josh’s words of truth: “Only by abandoning all attempts to meet others’ expectations can you truly hear the voice of the Spirit and be freed to pursue what God would have you uniquely do.”

As the wise apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, we can be free of all this stuff. All of it! And when we are, nothing stands between us and God. Then our faces can shine with the reflection of his light, and our lives gradually become more and more beautiful.

May this gripping story—spanning generations and continents—provide entertainment, reflection, and new direction for your life, so you too may move ahead into the light of freedom and joy.

Debbie Griffith

D
EBBIE
G
RIFFITH
,
speaker and radio host of “Everyday Matters,” is also a contributor to Focus on the Family’s TV Ministry “Your Family Live.”

Angelo

T
hink for a moment. Isn’t there a splendid randomness to the way your day is coming together today?

After all, it’s not the big, dramatic things we foresee and expect that make all the difference in our lives. It’s the chance, random encounters—the subtle things that surprise us…and change the very course of our individual destinies.

The Blackberry Bush
is a story about awakening to the fullness of this reality.