Reinventing Rachel

by Alison Strobel

  “No kidding. Where are you flying in from?”

  “Just got back from a weekend in the Rockies. I met some old girlfriends for a reunion. What are you up to?”

  Rachel laughed. “You have no idea how complicated the answer is to that question.”

  Barbara grinned. “Wanna get some coffee?”

  Rachel called her mom to let her know she was taking a detour, then followed Barbara in her rental car to a café near Barbara’s house. The glare of the sun was a welcome change from the dreary gray of Chicago’s lingering winter, and when she reached the coffee shop she took a minute to change from her sweater and jeans to a skirt and blouse more accommodating for the day’s mid-70s. They brought their drinks outside and settled into the chairs that sat under the storefront’s canopy.

  “So I heard through the grapevine that you went to Chicago.”

  Rachel nodded. “In June. I don’t know if you remember me talking about my friend Daphne—we grew up together, and she’d moved out there. If you heard about that I’m assuming you also heard about Patrick, and my parents?”

  She nodded, her face sympathetic. “I can’t believe everything that hit you all at once.”

  Rachel waved it away. “I can’t believe how selfishly I acted when you were in crisis. I’m so, so sorry, Barb.”

  “Nonsense. You had every right to be angry, especially when you were in crisis and I basically turned you away.”

  “But with good reason.”

  They looked at each other and laughed. “Should we just call it even?”

  Rachel smiled. “Sounds good.”

  “It’s funny we should meet right now,” Barbara said, stirring her drink. “Just before I left on Thursday I found the letter I’d written to you when I was making amends to everyone. I didn’t know where to send it when I’d written it, so I set it aside, and it got swept into a pile of stuff that’s been sitting forever in my office. I told myself I was going to track you down when I got home. God’s funny that way, eh?”

  The phrase “making amends” caught Rachel’s attention. “That wouldn’t by any chance have been part of step nine, would it?”

  Barbara’s eyes got wide. “How did you know that?”

  Rachel raised her hand. “My name is Rachel, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “What?!”

  “It’s true. Depressingly true.”

  “What happened?”

  Rachel chuckled. “How much time do you have?”

  o

  The trees down her parents’ street looked bigger than Rachel remembered. Everything on her drive over had seemed mostly familiar with just a bit of change—a store here and there had been replaced by something new, a stoplight put in where stop signs had once stood, a half-completed building where an empty lot had been. Here in the neighborhood where she’d grown up she noticed even the smallest changes—new flower boxes, new landscaping, newly painted trim. A lump sprang to her throat when she saw Daphne’s house. It was a different color now, with two unfamiliar cars in the driveway. A tricycle stood near the front door.

  She pulled into her parents’ driveway and pressed a hand to her chest to calm her heart. The Serenity Prayer sprang to mind, and she repeated it under her breath as she got out of the car. She’d already asked her father about the local AA meetings and had determined she’d attend them while in town. She only had thirteen more to go before she’d completed her “90 in 90.” Not only did she not want to break her commitment; she knew she really would need those meetings if she was going to get through the three-day visit intact.

  What are you waiting for? She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Okay, God. I’m going to need some serious reinforcements here. Give me grace for my parents. Give me willpower for my sobriety. And calm me down so I’m not so stressed. She closed her eyes and imagined her heavenly Father wrapping his arms around her—an image an AA friend had given her. The thought was comforting. She took hold of the cross around her neck, zipped it back and forth along its chain, and went inside.

  … a little more …

  When a delightful concert comes to an end,

  the orchestra might offer an encore.

  When a fine meal comes to an end,

  it’s always nice to savor a bit of dessert.

  When a great story comes to an end,

  we think you may want to linger.

  And so, we offer ...

  AfterWords—just a little something more after you

  have finished a David C. Cook novel.

  We invite you to stay a while in the story.

  Thanks for reading!

  Turn the page for ...

  • Reader’s Guide

  • Author Interview

  Reader’s Guide

  1. Which character in the book most represents you, and why?

  2. Have you ever felt similar temptations to doubt God, like Rachel did? How did you respond to those feelings? In other words, can you relate with Rachel?

  3. Have you ever had a friend who took a similar path—or nearly took a similar path—as Rachel took? How did you respond?

  4. Is there any legitimacy in the path that Rachel took? Do you feel the path was important for her growth as a Christian or was it a detour?

  5. Talk about Daphne’s character. How do you feel about her? Do you know anyone like her?

  6. Talk about symbolic elements in the novel. What do you see as symbolic and why?

  7. Discuss the romantic aspects of Reinventing Rachel. Who did you hope Rachel would end up with? Why?

  Author Interview

  What inspired you to tell Rachel’s story?

  The idea for the book actually started with myself and one of my oldest and closest friends, M. Like Rachel, I was raised in a Christian home, and like Daphne, M has always considered herself fairly irreligious. Our lives took very different paths as we grew, but to this day, thirty years since we first met, we’re still close and still involved in each other’s lives. I began thinking about how different my life would have been had I chosen to follow the path she’d taken, and slowly that idea evolved into “What might happen if a cradle Christian turned her back on her faith to pursue the life that her non-Christian friend was leading?”

  What do you hope readers glean from the story?

  That what we see in our world and our lives is only part of the picture. When it comes to how God works, we can never assume that we’re seeing the whole story. Our perception is so limited, our understanding so finite—we can’t take our experience as a clear indicator that God is or is not protecting us. Experience is given an awful lot of weight and importance in the Christian world these days, and I think that is so damaging. We need to start with what the Bible tells us about God, instead of trying to determine from our experience what he is like. The Bible tells us that we will have trouble in this world (John 16:33), but that God and his works are perfect and good (Deut. 32:3–4) and that we cannot know the mind of God (Isa. 55:8–9), and that God does not let fall from his hand those whom he loves and who love him (Ps. 37:33–34).

  Are there any parts of you in Rachel?

  Yes, though not many. Her personality is somewhat like mine, her inability to comprehend how people live with their godless worldviews. I’m not a big coffee fan, though I do love a good mocha! And we both share a sense of loyalty to our friends. M and I have been through a lot together in our thirty years of friendship, but we both know that if one of us was ever in need, the other would be there in whatever capacity was necessary, and that has been lived out in practice, not just promised in theory.

  Which character(s) in the book are most Christlike, in your opinion?

  I think Leah and her house church friends most reflect the kind of love Jesus commanded us to show one another. That’s what I wanted them to be—an example of what the church should look like. Church for so many people is just a weekend pit stop, a place where they go to relax and hear some good music and an inspiring pick-me-up of a message. It’s
not a community. It’s not a place they know they can go to when they’re in their deepest, darkest moment of need. That is what church ought to be, and I think when we’re in that place, serving one another on a sacrificial level, that’s when we’re most reflecting Christ.

  Why did Daphne have to die? It made perfect sense with the story, but what was the ultimate reason for her demise?

  I think Daphne’s death was a symbol of the logical end of a life without Christ. She was adamant in living her life on her own terms, and the Bible is clear that a life void of repentance leads to death (Rom. 6:23).

  What themes drove you in writing this story?

  The theme of friendship was a big one, seeing as it was the original building block for the entire concept of the book. Freedom was another one—what true freedom is, what a life lived in freedom looks like, or how we can think we’re free but we’re really enslaved to vices or habits or addictions—or even false thought patterns—that we can’t break free from on our own. The theme of God’s faithfulness was pivotal to the story as well—despite Rachel’s active turning away from God and her attempt to completely cut him out of her life, God continued to guide and protect her so that she could come out the other side to a place where she was willing to consider she may have been wrong about him.

  What draws you to being a writer, and what’s next for you in terms of projects?

  I love starting with a little “what if” and letting that play out. What if someone decided after twenty years of faith that she no longer believed in God? (Reinventing Rachel.) What if I got in a wreck on the freeway with a celebrity? (Worlds Collide.) What if a widow could reconnect with her deceased husband? (Violette Between.) What if a battered woman thought she deserved the abuse? (The Weight of Shadows.) I love seeing the little twists and turns that develop, and watching the characters develop and change and make choices that they think are going to lead to XYZ, but really end up leading to ABC. The creativity of it all, of watching something new form and blossom, is addicting.

  I have two more “what ifs” coming out in 2011. One of them asks, “What if a prominent Christian teacher became an atheist against her will?” That releases in the spring with Zondervan. My next book with David C. Cook, which releases in the fall, asks, “What if the actions of a pastor’s wife caused her husband’s church to split?”

  What are your favorite novels, and why?

  I think my all-time favorite book, the one I pull out over and over again and can flip to the middle of and know exactly what’s happening, is Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. The picture he paints of community is just awesome. And I’m a geek at heart, so I really love the techie setting. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is another flip-to-the-middle favorite. I recently reread it for the first time in eight or nine years with my book club, and I was stunned at how much I picked up on that I’d completely missed during those other years of reading. And I think that’s the sign of a truly great book—that you can read it in your teens, and in your twenties, and your thirties, and beyond, and enjoy it each time while also seeing things you never saw in those dozens of previous readings.

  Those two are my absolute favorites; after those, there are a whole slew of books that hold third place—A Voice in the Wind (Francine Rivers), Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery), anything by Lisa Samson or Claudia Mair Burney, any of the books in the Night Watch series by Terry Pratchett, Jodi Picoult’s third through twelfth novels ... the podium is a little crowded! I’m in a season of life right now where time to read is really hard to come by, and I miss the days of being able to curl up on the couch and devour a book in one afternoon. But when I find a sliver of unscheduled time for myself, those are the books, the old friends, I grab off the shelf.