Biblical Fiction Books That Bring Scripture to Life
Stories have always been one of the ways people make sense of faith. Biblical fiction takes that impulse a step further by combining imaginative storytelling with biblical settings, people, events, or themes. A good novel can place readers in a dusty marketplace, a crowded courtroom, or a fishing village, and let them follow characters who […]
Inside A Centurion: Three Soldiers, Three Roads, One Destination
An old tracker circles his prey through moonlit ferns, fifty winters into a life of hunting, and he still has not found the answer he is really looking for. Elsewhere, a shipwrecked officer discovers that obedience and faith may be closer cousins than he ever believed. These are the opening notes of Centurion by Darrell […]
Meet Darrell Smith: From Marine Sergeant to Historical Fiction Author
Some authors build their stories around worlds they have never seen. Others come to writing after a lifetime of varied work. Darrell Smith has a long list of experiences behind him: a rural Oregon upbringing, service in the United States Marine Corps, a long career in the lumber industry, plenty of time outdoors, a large […]
The Soldiers’ History Never Bothered to Name
Every account of the crucifixion mentions the soldiers present. Almost none of them give those soldiers a name. The centurion who confirmed the death. The man who drove the spear. The officer who said, watching a man die, “Truly this was the Son of God.” History remembered the moment and forgot the men standing inside […]
Can Faith Survive a Man Who Needs Proof First?
Not every soldier in Different Roads, Same Direction arrives at faith the same way. Dux, senior centurion of the German auxiliary cavalry, was raised by his grandfather Marcus Aurelius Marcellus on a farm that was really a school: the knife, the horse, the bow, and a Greek tutor’s lessons in Pythagoras. He learned early that […]
A Roman Centurion Meets a Jewish Teacher
Furtis has spent forty years soldiering across the Roman Empire, from Spain to the Rhine to Britain to Africa, and in all that time neither Jupiter nor Mars has ever answered him. What he’s been searching for, without knowing how to name it, sits closer to the god the Athenians themselves left unnamed at the […]