Show notes
Jill Eileen Smith has made a career out of re-telling the lives of Old Testament women for a contemporary audience, and fifteen or more books later she’s still going strong, a best selling and award winning author with an appreciative following.
Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and to mark this coming Easter weekend we’re doing something a little different. We talk to Jill about searching the biblical and other secular records to make the women, who were originally little more than shadows in the original accounts, come alive.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
Jill’s long road to publication
‘No secrets’ – except hard work and practice
The fascination of women’s Biblical stories
Why Jill has focused on Old Testament drama
Rich material from the Kings and their many wives
Who Jill is reading now
Where to find Jill Eileen Smith:
Website: www.jilleileensmith.com
Facebook: @JillEileenSmith
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/JillEileenSmith/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest/JillEileenSmith/
Feedburner: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Journal-JillEileenSmith
Twitter: @JillEileenSmith
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
But now, here’s Jill.
Jenny Wheeler: Hello there Jill, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.
Jill Eileen Smith: Thank you for inviting me. It’s really nice to meet you.
Introducing author Jill Smith
Jenny Wheeler: We’re doing this as a special Easter podcast episode, because you’ve made your career out of telling Bible stories for a contemporary audience, haven’t you, and particularly the women of the Bible. How did you get started on that?
Jill Eileen Smith – bringing Biblical women alive.
Jill Eileen Smith: I actually started writing about the men of the Bible. It began with a Bible study on King David, and I wanted to write a book about his life when the study ended. And I did.
I wrote two volumes, but I didn’t know how to write back then and after years of rejection and finding out that male characters for a lead in a book don’t sell, I was asked by one editor to consider rewriting it from the point of view of Michal. I turned her down, but I didn’t know anything about writing at that time.
Twenty years later, I had finally written about Michal and Abigail and The Wives of King David, and it sold to Revell. I’ve been writing about old Testament women ever since, except for a few men.
I do have The Heart of a King which is about Solomon, and I have a new one coming out in a year that will be about Joseph and Judah, but most of them are about the women.
Jenny Wheeler: For those who perhaps aren’t so familiar with the Bible stories, tell us a little of Michal’s story, because it is rather a touching one, isn’t it?
King’s daughter who lost everything
Jill Eileen Smith: Michal had a rough life. To write her story you have to understand King Saul and David and her brother, Jonathan. I had to study the whole era around them and what was going on in her life, from being a princess with her father a king to married to David.
David was not royalty at the time and became a fugitive, and so she wasn’t back in his life, there was a separation for a really long time. She lost every family member. She had a rough life, so studying her was pretty fascinating.
Michal – King Saul’s daughter, Kind David’s wife and a sad story – Jill Eileen Smith
Jenny Wheeler: Also, King Saul married her off to someone else during the years when David was his enemy, and then she was forced to return to David when he came back, so it was very difficult, wasn’t it?
Jill Eileen Smith: It was, yes.
Jenny Wheeler: Do you enjoy focusing on the women? When I was reading Miriam’s Song, which is the most recent one out, I felt that a lot of the women in the Bible had quite a hard road to hoe, and a lot of these stories aren’t particularly well understood, because they are often framed within a male point of view.
Have you found that tricky or interesting or challenging – to imagine your way into the story from the woman’s point of view?
Jill Eileen Smith: Sometimes you have to understand the men before you can even grasp what the woman is going through, because there’s very little written about a lot of these women. Some of them have a big part in Scripture like Esther and Ruth, and you can get a lot more about them, but there wasn’t much about Miriam at all.
When the Biblical record is sparse
We know she watched Moses when he was in a little ark in the Nile River and was found by the princess. Then you don’t hear much about her, except that she sang a song after they got out of Egypt, complained against her brother, and she was a prophetess and she died. The Bible doesn’t say much else.
I had to study Moses and Aaron and all about ancient Egypt, what they might have gone through, and I had to create a character for her that isn’t necessarily true. It’s not false, it’s just unknown.
Most women would have married in that day but there’s no mention of a husband or children, so we don’t know if she did. I created a husband and children for her, but that part is my imagination, based on her culture. But still, we don’t know enough. We don’t have a lot to go on with her.
Jenny Wheeler: In the Bible, even in the little we know, there comes through a feeling of her frustration at perhaps not being able to take a more upfront role of leadership, even in the Bible version, and you have brought that out a lot more strongly.
Jill Eileen Smith: I think part of her complaining against Moses for taking a foreign wife, because of what she says – hasn’t God spoken to us too – seemed more like a complaint of leadership than it did with what her brother had chosen. That’s why I made her character to be longing for a little bit more of what Moses had.
Miriam and Moses shared the Red Sea journey: Old Master by Schopin, Frederic; The Children of Israel Crossing the Red Sea; Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/the-children-of-israel-crossing-the-red-sea-189060
I think she might have wanted that closer relationship with God. As a prophetess, she would have had some, but not to where God talked to her face to face or called her up on the mountain or any of the privileges Moses had.
Faith’s desert experience
Jenny Wheeler: I must say that reading the book you got a very good sense of how difficult it was, all those days and days they spent in the desert with Moses up the mountain. It made you think we wouldn’t manage very well in our instant gratification society with that kind of delay, would we?
Jill Eileen Smith: No, and it’s fascinating to me that three days after they had escaped Egypt, they started complaining because they couldn’t find water. I’m like, God just took you through the Red Sea and destroyed your enemies and did all these miracles and you’re complaining that three days later, you don’t have water. Don’t you think he can provide that?
But I guess, as humans we could fall into that thinking very quickly if you’re very thirsty, I imagine.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. What have you found the biggest challenges have been in presenting accurate accounts that also are entertaining for a contemporary audience?
The Loves of King Solomon – a biblical series by Jill Eileen Smith
Jill Eileen Smith: At first I have to get to know the characters. I study the Scripture part first and as much as is told about the woman or the men around her. As you delve into that and try to imagine what might have been, I don’t change what happened, but I tried to look for what, why (motivation), or how it might have come about, and that helps me.
Sometimes I pull from people and experiences that are contemporary, that I have dealt with myself – kind of, they might have felt that way here. Sometimes you get an epiphany like that where, I’m going through this trial and maybe this is how so-and-so felt during their trial. It’s not the same trial, but the feeling could be the same.
Researching the ancient records
Jenny Wheeler: From the point of view of the actual research, I assume you don’t read Hebrew, so how do you do it in terms of the really ancient stuff? You’ve been a few times to Israel, haven’t you?
Jill Eileen Smith: Just once. I had studied a lot about Israel before we went there, and I sold The Wives of King David right before our first trip. But I home-schooled for 12 years, so already in my library I had a lot of commentaries. When I studied David’s life, I found everything I could find.
When I study a new character, I look for life and times books, cultural atlases, commentaries. I want to understand the geography. If I’m doing a historical like in Egypt, we know a lot of Ancient Egyptian history, but we don’t know when Joseph lived there, when Moses lived there.
We can’t pinpoint an exact time so I had to come up with what I thought might be a good fit. It could be totally wrong because there’s still debate today when the Exodus actually happened. I went with what I felt fit best, but again, my decision, my imagination, go back to the Scripture and stick with that. That’s what’s true. What I have incorporated historically is just my opinion.
Daughters of the Promised Land
Jenny Wheeler: You’ve done quite a lot of series. I’d like to mention the names of those, because you’ve written many books. One of them was Daughters of the Promised Land. Tell us a bit about that.
Jill Eileen Smith: The first one in that is loosely connected because Rahab wasn’t really part of the Promised Land. She precedes it a little bit but she’s the first one in the conquering of Jericho when they got into the Promised Land. Then you go to how the connection with her son is related to Ruth’s son.
Daughters of the Promised Land – series by Jill Eileen Smith, beginning with Rahab…
Deborah is part of the Judges, and then also Hannah – her son was the very last Judge before the Kings era, so they all fit in loosely in the Daughters of the Promised Land.
Jenny Wheeler: Then there’s The Wives of the Patriarchs.
Jill Eileen Smith: That would be about Abraham, Sarai, Rebecca and Rachel, so Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Jenny Wheeler: That precedes it historically, doesn’t it? Then The Loves of King Solomon. There were a lot of them. You couldn’t possibly do all of them, could you?
Jill Eileen Smith: No, that was actually an eBook series and it was fun. When I got to the end of Rachel I wanted to keep going, I wanted to write about Joseph, but she’s dead, so I can’t keep going. I had this idea, what if we added a book on to The Wives of the Patriarchs and then maybe I could add a book onto the end of The Wives of King David and make them about Solomon, because I know a lot about him.
Loves of King Solomon – in novellas
My publisher didn’t like that idea at the time, but they liked the idea of Solomon, the loves – if they were short. These are novellas. They’re not full length, they’re not in paperback, they are only eReaders. I picked four women that were mentioned.
His wife, Naamah, the last wife of David, Abishag. Solomon would have inherited her, and actually his brother wanted her to marry her, which was in essence saying, I want to take the throne from you, so he probably had her in his harem.
Then there would have been the Egyptian princess, he married her, we know that for sure, and I added the Queen of Sheba because she visited him and there is serious debate on how close they might have been, depending on which traditional tale from either Ethiopia or Arabia you believe. I combined the two. So there are only four out of a thousand women.
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The Heart of a King combines their stories but takes away a little bit. The Loves are all in the first person, from that woman’s point of view. The Heart of a King is Solomon’s story, his point of view is added and theirs is turned to the third person. It all meshes together in a way. It’s the compilation, but it’s different. You can read them all and still read that one and find things you didn’t catch in the others.
Bringing new insights to old stories
Jenny Wheeler: The book preceding Miriam’s Song was about Esther, Star of Persia, and it deals with that queen who is credited with saving the Jews during the reign of King Xerxes in the Persian Empire days. As you’ve mentioned,
it is a well-known story, but you’ve been credited with bringing new insights into it. I wondered how do you manage to do that when these stories are already quite well known?
Esther, Star of Persia – a Biblical story from Jill Eileen Smith
Jill Eileen Smith: That book was one I never thought I’d write. People had asked me to write about Esther and I thought, no, it’s been done too many times before, and I put it on the back burner.
But when we were getting to where I had done so many women in the old Testament, my publisher liked the idea of Esther and Miriam and I’m like, okay, I’ll give it a try, it started to sound interesting.
I decided to go into the historical record of Herodotus, because Xerxes was a historical person. You can read about him outside of Scripture whereas Esther and Vashti do not appear outside of Scripture.
Consulting the historical records
His wife outside of Scripture is a mistress. There are commentaries that say Esther was a mistress or Vashti was a mistress, and I’m like, she was such a cruel person that there’s no way either one of them, in my opinion, was a mistress, so I added her to the story as a third wife, because Xerxes had a lot of women.
I have put in a little of her life because she was the mother of his heirs who are in the Bible, like Artaxerxes is a scriptural person and a historical person. He succeeded Xerxes on the throne amidst murdering his brother, or someone else murdered his brother – it was crazy times back then. But I mixed history with the Scripture and that’s what made it different.
Jenny Wheeler: Who has been the most challenging character to write about?
Jill Eileen Smith: I had to think about that because there were two, and they jumped out. One was Rebecca. I never thought she would be difficult to write about until I got started, and then I went, there’s no story here. All we know is, she waters the camels, she goes to marry Isaac, she deceives Isaac, the end. We have nothing else on her.
But if you think about it, Abraham has this huge story, Jacob has this huge story, and Isaac is this little comma in between. You know very little about him either. I prayed over every scene in that book, and I was like, there’s no story here. I kept praying and writing and praying and writing, and at the end I went, oh, there’s a story here. So that one was the first difficult one.
Livening things up with a nemesis
The second would have been Deborah because again, all we have is a little bit, and then a song that she and Barak sang. I’m like, what do I do with this? That one took a couple of critique partners to help me talk it through. I had one who said, we’ll give her a nemesis, and so I gave her a daughter. Not that all daughters are nemeses, but you can have conflict with family, so that created her conflict.
Rebekah – biblical story from Jill Eileen Smith
Then I had to talk it through right before I turned it in with a different person, who read it for me, and I figured out what was missing, and then it worked out. Those were harder books to write, but every book has its hard points. Miriam wasn’t easy. I never like a first draft because I always feel like I don’t know where it’s going until it’s done.
Jenny Wheeler: Rebecca was the one who deliberately deceived her husband about the boys. She favored the younger one. That was pretty gutsy. It was deceitful, but it was a very strong-minded thing to do. She was very determined to see her own wishes fulfilled there. You get the feeling that she must have had a will of iron somewhere in her personality or character.
Jill Eileen Smith: I think so. It took guts to leave her home and travel with strangers to marry her cousin, or whoever he was by relation, that she had never met. But also, God had spoken to her that the older would serve the younger. She believed that. She knew that from the time they were born.
Rebecca – a determined woman
Why didn’t Isaac believe it? I can only think because he didn’t hear God say it. Only she did, and she was determined to make it happen rather than trust God that he would make it happen. God did say this would happen, and if he said it, he could have done it a totally different way. But she, like all of us, we tend to take life into our own hands instead of waiting for his timing, and she didn’t wait. She feared it would all go to Esau.
Jenny Wheeler: We’ve talked a lot about Old Testament women, but have you done any New Testament women?
Jill Eileen Smith: No, not yet. That’s a whole different ball game because I would have to study a completely different era. I know a lot about Ancient Rome, but I don’t know a ton about Ancient Rome and there’s a lot of history there that I would have to spend time getting to know.
Some of my favorite author friends, Tessa Afshar, she writes really good New Testament characters and I haven’t had a strong desire to go there. There’s nothing on the women there either, except for Mary.
Mary is intriguing but there’s controversy on writing her story too. But for most women, there’s not a lot there. You would have to make everything up, and I think that would be harder because you don’t even know what their men were like. You’re just saying, they followed Jesus. Except for maybe the Samaritan woman, there’s very little on anybody.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. What’s the biggest surprise you’ve had in doing all this research?
The biggest surprises in little things
Jill Eileen Smith: That’s a tough question. I’ve had little epiphanies, little insights, but nothing like a huge surprise. Maybe because I’ve spent so much time in the Bible all of my life and I have a really good memory and so I remember details.
If I’ve read that story in Scripture, I might go back and reread it and go, oh yes, I forgot about that. But they are not big surprises to me. They’re just insights and ‘aha’ moments.
Jenny Wheeler: Turning from the specific books to your wider career, could you tell us a bit about your life before you became a full-time writer and has that helped contribute to your work today?
Jill Eileen Smith: Before I ever was a writer, my sole desire in life was to be a wife and a mom. God granted that to me and gave me a wonderful husband and three sons who are now all adults, living their own life and with their own careers.
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We are empty nesters. I home-schooled for 12 years and at the point our youngest son graduated high school and went off to college, about that same time I finally sold my first book.
It gave me a career, something I’d worked at those 20 years preceding, even before homeschooling, but I guess all of that – homeschooling, being around men – is partly why I liked writing about the male point of view.
Switching gears to women’s view
That’s a hard sell. I had to switch gears to go to the female point of view. But now I really like that point of view and it all contributes. Our whole life contributes to every writer’s experience. Even today, as I go through whatever trial I might go through, and we all go through them, I pour those feelings into my stories.
Jenny Wheeler: You have written two nonfiction books as well. One of them is called When Life Doesn’t Match Your Dreams and the other, She Walked Before Us. They are smaller chapters about people’s life experience. Tell us about that.
Jill Eileen Smith – A devotional for dealing with disappointment
Jill Eileen Smith: That started as an idea at lunch with my agent in California when I was visiting several years ago. In fact, it was the year my first granddaughter was born, and we proposed one book of 24 women.
I was thinking, do a fictional scene and then have a devotional thing. But my publisher said, no, let’s separate that into 12 women, two books, and let’s dig deeper and not do a devotional scene. I’m thinking blog posts, that kind of writing, and I hadn’t done non-fiction before.
Working to make it real for readers
It ended up, because I write fiction, I wanted to put the reader in the imagination, like, take me to the place where Eve made that horrible decision to listen to the enemy and take the fruit. I fictionalized two scenes in every chapter and in between I tried to give an application or what we can learn from this. Then at the end, you can ask questions of yourself or in a group study to understand it more.
The first book is a little bit more memoir-ish. I wrote it when I was in a darker place in life, feeling more negative emotions. The second one I wasn’t in that place, but it was harder to write in a way, because I thought when the wives of David came up – they were in the second book – no problem, I wrote novels on most of these women.
But I have not experienced a son killing a son or a son raping a daughter or any of the things that Ahinoam and Maacah and Abigail did. I’ve not experienced abuse the way they did. I needed other examples to help women who have.
That was a bit harder. They seem easier and then they end up being more difficult to do. Hopefully they have blessed people in some way to understand women better and also themselves.
What is the secret of Jill’s success?
Jenny Wheeler: A perennial question I like to ask everyone I speak to is: is there one thing you’ve done in your writing career, more than any other, that’s been the secret to your success? How many books have you got out there now?
Jill Eileen Smith: I can’t remember. Around 15 or so, I’d have to count them. I thought about that and there’s no secret I have that I could say, I did this and that made me successful. I don’t really consider myself successful anyway, but what got me even into publishing, I would have to say, is surrender.
I had worked for 20 years and had stacks of rejections. I had had three agents and I was at a point where my agent said, we have to shelve the biblical fiction. It’s been around the Christian block too many times, nobody’s interested. She was going to try and sell some suspense I’d written, which is still on my computer. I wrote eight other books before the biblical fiction.
Finally, one day I wrote in my journal, Lord, I can’t keep doing this. It’s too hard. I’ll give my agent a year. I did not tell her that. In my mind I gave her a year to sell something and if she couldn’t, if I’d misread God, I was willing to give it up and ask him to show me what else to do.
Because I didn’t know anything else to do except teach piano, which I don’t really enjoy. But if I was on the wrong track, I didn’t want to keep pushing something I wasn’t supposed to be pushing, so I gave it to him.
The long road bore fruit at last
I only prayed about it one other time when I felt this urge to pray about it, and I let it go. About three months later, we had a contract. Then about two months after that, I found that journal entry. I’d totally forgotten I’d written it. I was like, wow, God answered it within six months, and I hadn’t even cared anymore. I mean, I cared but I didn’t. I had totally given it to him.
I thought I had given it to him many times before, but this was a final I can’t take this, I really can’t take this anymore. So I gave up. It’s like a song I heard by Laura Story. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her, but she sings a song called When I Give Up, I Gain. That was true in this instance. When I gave up, I gained.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd8a3T_P2gs
Laura Story – the song that resonates with Jill Eileen Smith’s experience.
But it wasn’t like that’s a magic secret or something that if you give it, the Lord is going to give it back to you. He might not. You have got to hold life in an open hand because we don’t know.
Jenny Wheeler: Turning to Jill as reader, because this is The Joys of Binge Reading and we do like to ask you what you like to read and to share with other people who might enjoy it as well. Where do your reading tastes lead you?
What Jill is reading now
Jill Eileen Smith: For a novelist, I do an awful lot of non-fiction reading. I think it’s because my life is at a point where I gravitate toward books that are going to teach me more about Scripture, about prayer, about God. I lean toward reading a lot of nonfiction, but I also know I need the escape. That also teaches me. Fiction can teach you lessons you won’t catch in a non-fiction story.
I end one book and start another. I’ve got four going at a time. I read about a chapter in each one at bedtime, counting my Bible. For fiction, I don’t binge read anybody, but I have favorite authors.
Tidewater Bride by Laura Frantz – recommended by Jill Eileen Smith
The only one, and I think I read almost all of her books, is my critique partner who has been a friend for more years than I can count. She doesn’t write a lot of them anymore, but she writes fairytales now – she used to write romance, JM Stengl.
Her fairytales are on Amazon or whatever. She indie publishes them, and I love her fairytales. I am reading Laura Frantz right now and she’s new to me. I hadn’t read her before though she’s a Revell or Baker author. I’m reading Tidewater Bride. That’s very interesting. She has got a different style that’s new to me.
Some of Jill’s favorite authors
I love the Jane Austen style of Julie Klassen and I like Hannah Alexander and Deborah Raney and Tamera Alexander. There are so many friends that write books. I can’t keep up with all of them, so I pick and choose. I’ve got so many to-be-reads. I had to finally give away some because I knew I’d never get to them.
If I just read one author, all their books, I would never read anybody else’s so I don’t binge read in that regard, but I binge read because I never stop reading.
Tamera Alexander – one of Jill’s “go-to” favorite authors
Jenny Wheeler: There was the author you also mentioned who writes New Testament women’s stories. Who was that?
Jill Eileen Smith: Tessa Afshar. I really like her work. I haven’t read a ton of my fellow biblical authors work, partly because I can’t read a book if I’m going to write that same story.
But since Tessa is in the New Testament, she’s fair game, because I’m not in the New Testament, so I enjoy the trek into reading biblical fiction from her. If I’m going to write about Esther and someone else has written about Esther, I can’t read it.
Jenny Wheeler: I can understand that. We are starting to run out of time, so looking back down the tunnel of time, if you were doing this all over again, is there anything you would change?
Practice . . . Practice. . . Practice . . .
Jill Eileen Smith: As a writer I would say, don’t do it the way I did, because I did it backwards. I learned the hard way to write. Had I studied the craft first, I would have probably avoided 20 years of rejection and so much trial and error and reading books on how to, and trying to practice, practice, practice.
If I’d read more of those how-to books or taken classes on writing – though I would warn against taking too many classes. If you take a college course or even a degree in writing or in English, that can work against you because some English makes you too grammar oriented and fiction doesn’t follow grammar the same. You have to be willing to break a lot of rules, but you have to know the rules first.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. I think some college courses tend to try and direct people into more literary fiction too, which may not be what they’re really wanting to do.
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Jill Eileen Smith: I don’t really read much literary fiction. I have read some of the Classics, but I find that for contemporary reading, you have got to grab me from the start and not let go. If I keep putting it down, I may not finish it. I used to always finish a book and now I’m like, life’s too short. If I don’t like it after the first few pages, then I’m not going to finish it.
Jenny Wheeler: You and many, many other readers. That’s what we have to cater for, isn’t it? What’s next for Jill as writer? What have you got on your desk for the next 12 months or so?
What’s next for Jill as author?
Jill Eileen Smith: In a couple of weeks, I have to turn in Joseph’s story, which is about Joseph and Judah. I can’t give away the title yet. They’ve told me but it’s not public, and that will get turned in on March 15th, or earlier if I can get it done. I’ve been away from my desk for three weeks visiting my baby granddaughter, so I haven’t been able to get as much done. I asked for a two-week extension and then I’ll start research on Eve.
I’m going to do Eve’s story and then Noah’s wife. One each year. I only have one book this year. Once I turn in Joseph, I’ll do Eve and I don’t have to worry about two or three books, which I was doing, which is too much. I can’t do that anymore. Life is too busy.
After that, I don’t have a contract. I don’t know what else I want to do after that. I’ve got to think about it, and see what my publisher wants, if anything, from me. We’ll see.
Jenny Wheeler: Do you enjoy hearing from your readers and where can they find you online?
Where to find Jill online
Jill Eileen Smith: My website is the best place on Jill Eileen Smith.com and sign up for my newsletter. I am trying to push that because I’m hoping to get into writing more often. Mainly because social media – while I hang out on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter and Pinterest now and then, though I am really bad at that right now – they are changing so much that you might follow me and never see my posts because of the way they keep changing their algorithms.
If you want to keep up with what I’m doing, the newsletter and website are the best places to find me. Write to me through my website and I will respond. I might not respond the same day, but I will respond as soon as I can.
Jenny Wheeler: We’ll put all those links in the show notes we publish for every podcast so that a transcript of our chat will appear online and will be there for ever more, like evergreen material.
Jill Eileen Smith: Great, thank you.
Jenny Wheeler: Thank you so much, Jill, this has been wonderful. It’s been great to be able to talk to you today and I’m sure it gives a little extra edge to publishing just before the Easter weekend. Lovely to have had a chance to catch up.
Jill Eileen Smith: Thank you. It’s been great to meet you. It’s weird that we’re talking and you’re a day ahead of me. I find that fascinating, but it’s been fun. Thank you for calling me.
If you enjoyed Jill Eileen Smith’s stories of Biblical women you might also enjoy a different take on spiritual quests – Gay Hendricks’ mysteries about a Tibetan monk turned LA Sleuth.
LISTEN TO GAY HENDRICKS
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