Electronic Pulses Wipe Out Modern Conveniences, Easy Lifestyle
by Randall Murphree
August 16, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Global warming may be a real threat, but it's a global power outage that takes center stage in Night Light, Terri Blackstock's latest murder mystery/suspense novel. Night Light is the second book in the #1 best-selling author's four-title Restoration series from Zondervan. The Restoration novels focus on the Branning family, typical suburbanites enjoying their comfortable, upper middle-class lifestyle near Birmingham, Alabama. The Brannings and their neighbors experience an abrupt and unique power outage, but they assume it's the usual -- inconvenient for an hour or so, but certainly temporary.
However, the Brannings and their neighbors grow increasingly uneasy as the hours pass. It's not just the electricity that won't work. Neither will phones -- land line or cell. Autos won't crank. Planes crash. (In fact, Last Light, first in the series, opened with planes crashing into the Birmingham Airport.) Hospital equipment is useless. No e-mail. No Internet. No XBox. No television. It's total blackout. Total.
It's a pretty scary scenario, but the author insists it could happen. She consulted a physicist to make sure she wasn't just dreaming up a situation for the sake of tension and terror. Her source explained that, indeed, a series of electromagnetic pulses could have a far-reaching impact, even conceivably rendering any and all electronic devices powerless.
In Night Light, the outage has been in effect more than two months, and the Brannings are adapting to new and creative ways to meet life's daily needs -- put food on the table, do the laundry, locate drinkable water.
Fortunately the four Branning children are coming around and learning to garden, helping dig a community well and sacrificing for the good of the whole family -- or the neighborhood.
Adding appeal and tension to the storyline are Aaron, Joey, Luke and Sarah, a family of children from outside the Brannings' neighborhood. At nine, Aaron is the oldest of the four siblings. He and Joey are caught breaking into the Brannings' home to steal food. Sixteen-year-old Jeff Branning tracks them down and discovers they're living in a garbage-filled apartment with no adult supervision. Their mother has disappeared from the scene.
Led by Jeff's compassion, the Brannings take in the four children, a move that stretches relationships within the family and among their neighbors as well.
Blackstock is one of Christian fiction's most prolific writers, yet she continues to come up with creative storylines and appealing characters. She honed her craft in the secular romance genre (3.5 million sales). Then almost 15 years ago, she began experiencing a conviction that she should use her gift to reflect her Christian faith. It was a faith she had accepted as a young girl, but for too long, she had put other priorities above it.
"I wanted to be able to tell the truth in my stories," Blackstock said, "and not just be politically correct. It doesn't matter how many readers I have if I can't tell them what I know about the roots of their problems and the solutions that have literally saved my own life."
Consequently, Blackstock incorporates the Gospel into her novels. Not with a heavy hand nor from a preacher in the pulpit, but via flawed men and women who struggle with their faith, who grow stronger, and who share their faith with others.
Her first title for Zondervan, Evidence of Mercy, was published in 1995. She's been producing page-turning, spine-tingling, emotion-producing, hair-raising Christian fiction at a fast and furious pace ever since -- 25 titles and almost two million books sold.
Night Light is evidence that Blackstock still has what it takes to produce a gripping story that's original, fun and faith-based.
Randall Murphree, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is editor of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
