Pine Mountain Christmas — Emily Josephine

A fifteen-year-old boy, hiding a dark secret that haunts him day and night, and which has ripped his faith in God – and his father – to pieces......a fourteen-year-old victim of modern slavery, feeling all alone in the world, and wanting nothing more this Christmas than to be part of a family......and a middle-aged mother who fears her family coming apart by the seams if God doesn't show His face soon...**********+++PLEASE NOTE: This story, though mostly rated PG, does contain a brief (non-graphic) description of sexual abuse. Parental discretion is therefore advised, and the scene may disturb sensitive readers.+++ Nine years ago, Sam Johnson experienced a traumatic incident that to this day, his family knows nothing about. Between that and the school bully who began tormenting him a year ago, Sam's faith in God has all but been destroyed. In the meantime, his mother, Sheila, is experiencing a growing frustration with her life. For starters, she never wanted to take her current teaching job at the nearby private school in the mid-cities area of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. She also knows that her husband has become increasingly dissatisfied with his position at their church fellowship as the children's pastor. At the same time, she knows her son Sam is hiding a deep pain, but can't draw the truth out of him. All of this has sapped her enthusiasm for the Christmas holiday. God seems to have fallen silent...except for the stirring she feels deep inside that something about her life, her family's life, needs to change. The one thing she does know is that the change isn't to return to the mission field that she and her husband left nine years ago when their middle child began experiencing psychological distress. Her mother's heart knows that returning back to the mission field would disrupt the tenuous strands bonding her family together. Unfortunately, her husband, Hank, is convinced of the opposite. Sheila's only hope is that spending Christmas in southeast Oklahoma to visit Dalia, the human trafficking victim that her family met a few months ago, and Dalia's friends, will at least serve as a distraction from the family troubles. And maybe, just maybe, God will use the getaway to bring clarity to her family's life. Fourteen-year-old Benesha, on the other hand, is not happy when she finds out that the Johnson family will be crashing her Christmas celebration on Pine Mountain. For years, she has dreamed of experiencing a real Christmas, with her former slave friends Dalia and Arianna and the family she vaguely remembers she has back in Kenya. Christmas in the United States was not supposed to happen this year. By now, the courts were to have discovered her relatives and flown her back across the ocean. But that hasn't happened, and now she is not only still stuck in her foster home, but she also is going to be forced to celebrate her first real Christmas with strangers. Her frustration with the Johnson family turns to curiosity, however, when God begins speaking to her to pray for Sam. The closer to Christmas they all come, the higher tensions rise, challenging each person's faith, as well as each person's view of family, in ways they've never been challenged before.**********This fifth novel in Emily Josephine's Pine Mountain Estates series is a heartwarming – and, at times, heart-searing – Christian Christmas novel about faith, friends, and family. You can read it as a stand-alone. However, you will understand the nuances of the characters and the plot better if you've read the first four books in the series.