Author: Cynthia Ruchti
Located in: Central Wisconsin
Submitted: April 20, 2010
Tell us a little about yourself. I live in a perpetual state of wonder--both the pondering kind and the awe kind. My husband and I are planted in the north woods, near cranberry bogs, pine forests, deer habitat, and our three amazing kids and five grandchildren. I write and produce a daily radio broadcast called The Heartbeat of the Home (now in its 31st year), serve as president of the 2000-member American Christian Fiction Writers, and love to tell stories of Hope-that-glows-in-the-dark.
What was your motivation behind this project? Every book I write is motivated by a desire to tell the truth in story form. My husband almost didn't come home from a canoe trip to Canada a few years ago. The rescue plane reached him within minutes of what would have been his final breaths from a sudden, devastating illness. He returned home. But what if he hadn't? And what if I wasn't sure I wanted him back? My writer mind began to tease the embers of an idea, creating the character Libby who felt cheated because it appeared her husband found the escape hatch for their empty marriage before she did. It cost my imagination a good workout to picture Libby with different motivations and desires than mine, but it also cost me emotionally to plunge deep enough to write her story authentically.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? God encouraged us to recognize hope sometimes hides, but it's always there. He taught us that even when life looks different than we thought it would, it's survivable. My prayer is that the men and women who read They Almost Always Come Home will draw courage for their own circumstances and allow for the possibilities that they are both stronger and more vulnerable than they knew, and that restoration is worth chasing.
How were you personally impacted by working on this project? In order for the words to come out right, I had to abandon myself to what the Lord wanted to do in my own heart. I felt Libby's weariness in her journey, bore some of her grief, ached with her, lost sleep over her pain. I'm still experiencing the impact as I take the lessons she discovered and apply them to my own life and marriage.
Anything else you'd like readers / listeners to know: Connecting with readers who find themselves in one of the characters or lose themselves in the story, who find a spark of hope or lose a long-held fear--what could bring more joy to an author's heart?
