The Threshing Floor

Book excerpt: Simon Freeman has just graduated from college and is driving across country in search of a lucrative sales job and the American Dream. Along the way, he is diverted off the path by a storm that leads him back to a small Midwestern town where he had spent the first ten years of his life. After reconnecting with his old friends, he quickly becomes accustomed to an all too familiar lifestyle. Not long after his arrival, a murder rocks the community, and Simon becomes convinced that he has been chosen to put an end to a curse and the cycle of tragedies that have plagued the town of Bethel for the past seventy-two years. With the help of a wily, old principal named Thelma Harold, he comes to believe that by renovating the local elementary school, he can influence a referendum vote that will restore the values and priorities of a corrupt, depraved community that has been overrun by a shrewd businessman named Jack Lawless and a small faction of wealthy landowners. During the renovation, however, Simon unwittingly enters into his own personal journey that takes him from salvation to sanctification. Along the way, a fledgling romance with a young teacher named Hope Wiseman forces Simon to confront the demons of his past and make a choice to either serve himself or Christ. In the end, Simon finds out that simply returning a building to its original condition has far greater societal implications to the eternal welfare for the cursed people of Bethel.