My form of witness

SOL: What prompted you to write Bystanders?

Valerie: This is a book that grew out of some writing I used to do for church magazines – decades back! I’d always been fascinated by the idea of taking minor Biblical characters, or even just people who could have been there when big events were happening, and letting them tell their own personal stories. People like a servant in the house of Mary and Martha, or Sarah watching her husband Abraham setting off with their son Isaac, prepared to sacrifice him. Or a man on the edge of the crowd, getting ready to throw his stone at the woman ’taken in adultery’  …   The sort of ordinary people who were at the edges of the stories we all know well.

Valerie: The book is classified by my publisher, Wakefield Press, and by reviewers as ‘biblical fiction’  – I think that’s a fair description. The basic stories are biblical; the speakers’ own lives are fiction accounts. The fact that a secular publishing house has been willing to produce not only this book, Bystanders, but now a companion volume, Witnesses, which has just been launched in March 2023, shows that there is a market for Christian fiction out there. That’s reassuring.

Valerie: Anyone interested in human nature , because these stories are about people and their feelings. Obviously also it’s for people interested in the Bible and willing to explore the stories in it from a  new perspective, not in conflict with Scriptures, but prepared to look at the people involved with new eyes. Age group? – anyone from teenage up.  Many  schools have used Bystanders to engage students in Religious Studies classes, Many adults and home study groups have found it a great resource and discussion stimulus, especially as each of the fifteen stories has a study guide at the end of the book,  with questions that take readers back first to the original Bible story, then relate the issues in the story to contemporary social events and problems. It’s proved to be a great discussion starter.

Valerie: That’s hard to answer. I guess you could say that I wait for the spirit to move me. To say ‘Here’s a person you could write about’ and here’s an idea for that person’s own life and story. Then I get to work, researching the historical period and the way of life, so that I am creating convincing people in a realistic context. Hard work – and challenging – but fascinating and rewarding. Then the drafting, and finding an authentic voice for these very different people. And writing – and rewriting. Reading the story aloud until I feel I’ve captured the voice of the person.

Valerie: If by ‘facts’ you mean historical fact and authenticity, that’s a given. But if by ‘fact’ you mean the scriptural story, that too is a given. There must be nothing that conflicts with the Bible. Yes, I flesh it out in sometimes quite challenging ways, but the basic test there is : could it have been like that for the speaker?  And that’s where the interplay of imagination comes to the fore.

Valerie: I hope that people will see that the Bible is not just an ancient book containing important spiritual truths, but that it’s a living document, and that the people in it are living, breathing people – very like ourselves. If we can develop that close intimate contact with the Bible, we are more open to the working of the Holy Spirit through it. That’s the effect I’d like it to have. This book, Bystanders, and its companion volume, Witnesses, with another sixteen characters,  are both dedicated with the traditional AMDG on the front page. ’To the greater glory of God.’  In many ways these books are my form of witness.

Witnesses is available from Valerie’s website or from Dymocks bookshops.

Feature photograph March 2023, taken at the book launch of Witnesses in Adelaide.