The power of a compelling book premise

It’s a compelling premise that makes the book so intriguing that you can’t put it down.

Between You and Us by Kendra Broekhuis has one of the most tantalizing premises I’ve ever heard: “When a grieving woman unexpectedly enters an alternate version of her life, she must choose between the husband she loves and the daughter she lost in this brave, gripping novel.” Dear readers, I was gripped by this book and stayed up several nights too late to finish it and figure out the how, what, and why behind the main character’s choices.

When I discovered that Broekhuis, who grew up near Grand Rapids, Michigan, was a member of City Reformed Church, a CRC congregation in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I had to get the tea directly from the author herself. I had many questions, including how she was inspired to write this extraordinary book.

“When I started writing, I never thought about fiction; it wasn’t on my radar,” Broekhuis said. “I preferred reading fiction, but I preferred writing nonfiction.”

But a personal tragedy plunged her and her husband Collin into a state of grief and realization for which there were no easy answers. Nine years ago, Broekhuis gave birth to her beloved second daughter, Aliza, who was stillborn at 33 weeks.

“The grief had begun,” she said at her 20-week ultrasound, when doctors discovered the baby had triploidy, a rare, life-threatening chromosomal disorder that occurs when a fetus has three copies of each chromosome instead of the normal two. Aliza was not developing properly and was not expected to survive.

“People are going through tough times,” Broekhuis said. “How does it feel to grieve honestly and live with a spark of hope at the same time? Grief also brings up so many what-ifs. You mourn the memories you wanted to create but didn’t have the chance to.”

This experience of grief shaped her character Leona’s story, which is about loss and life after it. While watching a Marvel film set in a multiverse (the idea that there could be other universes beyond the obvious one), Leona’s choices became clear.

In the novel, Leona is faced with an unearthly choice when she enters an alternate universe where her deceased daughter Vera is alive and growing up, but her relationship with her husband is cold and strained. Will she choose to live in the world where her daughter’s heart beats, or the one where her marriage is warm and stable? Can she even choose?

Broekhuis drew on her own life experience: she grew up in a “privileged” neighborhood but then, as an adult, chose to live in the city, where “the majority live at or below the poverty line,” adding “socioeconomic threads” that “complicate Leona’s decision.”

The result is a gripping novel that offers “sensitive portrayals of the nuances of grief, the challenges of healing, and what it means to trust in God’s will,” said a review in Publishers Weekly.

Broekhuis, who lives with her husband and four children – Jocelyn, Levi, Cecily and Marre – describes her book as “clean fiction” as opposed to overtly “Christian fiction”.

“I wrote it because I thought it would sell to the general public,” she said. “I wanted the book to have redemptive themes and a hopeful feeling at the end. I didn’t want to spiritually ignore anyone’s loss, but as Christians we have hope.”

The author is working on her second book for Waterbrook, the Christian division of Penguin Random House. The twist? “The (main character) finds out on the day of her father’s funeral that he is not her biological father.”

Well, that sounds like another compelling read to me.