Lorry Lutz's Blog, page 3

Bushnell’s persistence

In the Victorian era Christian activist, Katharine Bushnell, helps free trafficked girls in Lutz’s Daughters of Deliverance. In spite of threats by government officials and journalists who call her reports “LIES,” she persists in exposing truth.

“Can I be two when I am only one?”

Seems I’m just catching up with famous authors who influenced people like CS Lewis and R. J Tolkien.  I think the literary side of my brain took longer to develop. So here at 90  I’m discovering a new author–George Macdonald (don’t be shocked. I should have majored in English Lit at Wheaton College!)  I’ve never read his famous fantasy novel, Phantastes, which opened new doors for Lewis and influenced his return to Christianity. But on my way to 91,  I’ll put it on my Kindle to find out what impressed Lewis so.

I recently found a little book of Macdonald’s at my son’s home–Diary of an Old Soul. I certainly identified with the “old soul” part this morning as I moved deck furniture around and off—ready for a much-needed “power-washing.  I don’t identify with all of the 366 sonnets Macdonald wrote — but here’s one I heavily underlined:

Two things at once, thou know’st I cannot think.

When busy with the work thou givest me,

I cannot consciously think then of thee. 

Then why, when next thou lookest o’er the brink

Of my horizon, should my spirit shrink, 

Reproached and fearful, nor to greet thee run?

Can I be two when I am only one?

My problem exactly. Working at my desk, fashioning sentences, hunting for words, I am not consciously thinking of God’s direction.  But  even as He controls the universe, answers billions of prayers at once, sends His angels to protect and comfort His children, He remembers me. A thought too big to understand.

What a comfort to know that during the months– yes, years–I researched,wrote and rewrote Daughters of Deliverance,  and The Queen’s Daughters,  I felt God’s guidance and presence and encouragement when I  was too discouraged to go on. If you’ve read my books about Katharine Bushnell, perhaps you saw  godly insights or the development of Kate’s character  that reflected a touch of God– that for a moment said “yes” to Macdonald’s question.  “Can I be two when I am only one?”

What people are saying :)

Like most of you, I find it hard to sell myself — or my creations. I sometimes even hesitate to hand out promotion about my books, like this clever,  three-fold business card my grandson designed. But in my heart I’m convinced that God encouraged me to write Katharine Bushnell’s story—and that many readers are blessed by her life and courageous work among trafficked girls and women in the Victorian era.

So here are a few unsolicited Amazon reviews from some of my readers:

Lorry Lutz eloquently narrates the story {in The Queen’s Daughters}of courageous Dr. Katharine Bushnell, who penetrated the realms of darkness that enslaved so many Indian & Chinese young girls in the Victorian era. Through her extensive research and creativity, Lorry articulately reveals the plight of vulnerable young girls sold into the sex slavery with no one to save them or defend them, and highlights the amazing transformation that can take place in their lives when a godly woman abandons the comforts of this world, trusts her Lord for the impossible, and reaches out to those who are hurting the most. Through her ups and downs, Dr. Bushnell has left a deep impact in my heart … This is a ‘must read’ for all who wish to see God’s justice lived out in our day.                            

I was pleased that the following reader caught Kate’s concern, not only about sexual slavery, but about the misunderstanding of how God intended women to be treated. Her insights into then, new ideas, about the role of women appear here and there—pointing to a surprising ending.

This is a fascinating historical book – Based on true facts. This is not a romance about a queen’s daughters. Instead this is about many things, but also about how the {British}GB soldiers were provided young girls in India for their pleasure. But there is only talk of how these men are amused with not talking of sex acts – but you can figure very easily what they went through…..Being a Christian, I also learned so much about how God really feels about women. The differences in the Hebrew words and how they are translated into English – is surprising.                                     

And the following reader also reminds you that  Daughters of Deliverance is followed by a sequel, The Queen’s Daughters.

I was thrilled with the release of The Queen’s Daughters a few weeks ago and couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy after having read Lorry’s previous book (Daughters of Deliverance). Having become challenged with the courage and conviction of Dr. Katherine Bushnell I was eager to read more of her work on behalf of young girls caught in the sex trafficking trap. This book captivated me as I followed her travels throughout the world to fight for these women. 

You can submit your own review of one of these books (after you’d read them of course).It’s quite simple.  Just scroll down the page where you viewed or purchased the books on Amazon, and you’ll see on the bottom left hand side CUSTOMER REVIEWS.

IN A FEW DAYS MY TWITTER NAME WILL BE CHANGED TO @LorryLutz and a professional publicist  will be helping me gussy up the messages.- So Tweet me!

Blessed are the pure in heart

Emma, my ten-year-old great- granddaughter, can’t wait to read Great-grandma’s book.  When her mom brought the Daughters of Deliverance home, the smile on her face tells it all .  Ten might be a little young . Thankfully the concepts of trafficking and slavery are still beyond her, but I know she’ll admire my historical  heroine, Katharine Bushnell, and her  passion to rescue girls from evil.*

I love her sweet innocent face,  I’m thankful she’s growing up in a family where she’s loved and protected; where her big brothers would never allow anyone to hurt her; and where her parents teach her the Bible and pray for her  to grow up knowing God loves her.

One day she’ll find out that since Kate’s discovery and exposure of “white slavery” in the United States in the late 1800’s,  the tragic  practice has only grown worse.

There are approximately 20 to 30 million slaves in the world today. According to the U.S. State Department, 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year, of which 80% are female and half are children. — Cortana

*Though the book deals with adult subjects, I’ve written Kate’s story without sordid details. In fact, Kate’s  faith and obedience to God as she finds herself in difficult situations, is what my readers are telling me challenges them  the most.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Am I Too Old To Write?

In 1977 when my husband and I were home from South Africa for the summer, I took a fiction-writing class to complete my MA. My professor encouraged us to start outlining a novel from a newspaper article or an experience we’d had.  I found myself imagining a forbidden romance between a black girl and a white boy in South Africa under Apartheid.

When I handed in my outline I told the professor I had posted over my ‘typewriter’, LORD YOU WRITE- I’LL TYPE. He chided me to listen to God’s guidance, but that I had to do the writing.  I shouldn’t blame poor writing on God.

I had been picking up graduate classes here and there, even a few hours in Kenya , and at 51 years of age I walked down the aisle with  one of my undergraduate sons and two future grand-daughters-in-law.

The Writing Years

Fast forward almost thirty years during which I had published ten books– about missions, the role of women in the Bible and the church, biographies. And yes, that classroom assignment became my first novel, The Soweto Legacy. ( Amazon Kindle.)

Then a  friend challenged me, “Lorry you should write the story of Katharine Bushnell. Her life needs to be told.”

I wasn’t interested, but to please Mimi I began researching Bushnell, a medical doctor in the late nineteenth century. Bushnell was active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and accepted Frances Willard’s invitation to work on the streets of Chicago with “fallen women.” My research at the Metropolitan University in London unearthed hand-written and carbon copies of reports of girls bought or coerced into the military brothels of the British Army–but no personal letters, journals, or stories of Katharine Bushnell’s life.  It would have been a dull biography at best.  A helpful literary agent suggested  I write her story as historical fiction..

As I was about to start writing, my husband, Al, was diagnosed with cancer during a frightening winter night in the ER. God please don’t take him.  We started the many trips for chemo. Thank you that he’s staying strong and feeling well. We sold our home and moved into a retirement home. Praise God. But in 2008 he peacefully left to be with Jesus. Can I come too?

Is this God’s will?

When I finally started to write again, I became discouraged. I’d never tackled as big a project as this. I needed a publisher, but none was interested. One suggested I hire an editor to bring the manuscript up to their requirements.  After a summer of rewriting, they turned me down. I was ready to give up.

One Sunday morning in December, 2013, I stayed in bed to do business with God.  I needed an answer.  Other responsibilities were challenging me in my community, yet I hesitated to take them on. God, do you want me to finish these books?  Are they really as important as ministering to people here in the retirement community? I need clear guidance if I’m to go on.

That morning Andy Stanley spoke about Nehemiah who had rebuilt Jerusalem’s wall. Sanballat and his cronies called him down for a chat, but Nehemiah knew they were planning to harm him.

He responded, “I am engaged in a great work, so I can’t come down.”

God’s Word spoke to me.  The “great work” was writing the story about His servant, Katharine Bushnell.  I “can’t come down” to stop my work until it is completed.  Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas accepted the manuscript.  They published Daughters of Deliverance   three years later And eight months after that–just five months before my 90th birthday—the sequel, The Queen’s Daughters saw the light.

HOW CAN YOU TELL THAT YOUR 90- YEAR- OLD MIND IS ‘CATCHING UP’ WITH YOUR 90-YEAR-OLD BODY?

I think I figured it out tonight.

I’m booking my travel  for an exciting “trip-around-America ” arranged by my children for my 90th birthday, to visit all my family..  I started out in Phoenix last month, and tonight I scheduled flights to  go to Portland in April   and Chicago over the fourth of July.

Here’s where the mind began to deteriorate. In the intricate  (to me)selection  of points versus dollars (on South West  Airlines) I tried to figure out which leg of the flight would be cheaper –to use points or dollars? Jumping back and forth between schedules, I suspected SW was playing tricks on me.  Every time I scrolled back to the outgoing flight, the dollars seemed to be getting higher, and the points even worse.

I could feel my blood pressure rising.  I had to settle something quickly — and clicked PURCHASE  for the Portland booking.  Then on to Chicago. Of course prices would be higher over the fourth of July weekend, so I  grabbed the cheapest flight in the middle of the day and hit PURCHASE again.

Oh No!  I had booked my flight from Denver to Portland and to Chicago on the same day– same air time. and double the price.  Of course an old lady who has trouble getting out of chairs (soft, low ones of course) shouldn’t  be booking air flights on a complicated high-tech computer at her bed-time.

It made me think of Katharine Bushnell, protagonist of my two recent historical novels. Kate had to make her own travel arrangements to China, England, India,  Australia, New Zealand and the Far East,.  Each time she went in person to the office of the steamship company.   Often funds came in at the last minute. If you’ve read Daughters of Deliverance or The Queen’s Daughters,  you’ll admire her resilience and courage as I do.

I suspect there were times she wondered if she was making the right choices.  Her strong faith in God’s provision and direction enabled her to take risks for  Him. At 92 her body was growing weaker, but her keen mind was still sensitive to His call.  Finding her eulogy enabled me to add that crowning touch to her story.

 

 

Passionate to save girls like this

I confess, this endorsement comes from a friend– an intellectual, well-read  woman with a  Ph.D.  behind her name. So when she wrote this review, I felt that I should  share it with you.

If you haven’t read Daughters of Deliverance or The Queen’s Daughters yet, you might want to do so after reading her reaction.  Getting to know the  Victorian heroine, Katharine Bushnell, who passionately tried to help girls  like the one on the cover, will warm your heart. You’ll be challenged to pray more faithfully for women and girls still caught in trafficking  today.  My friend writes:

It is wonderful to see her story come to life, and you’ve done a marvelous job. What I like best is how accessible it is, and how she battles the very real emotions and challenges we all face. You retain her powerful intellectual and spiritual gifts, but place it inside a very human woman! I love that. Thank you again for the honor of sharing in your journey, and I’m thrilled you’ll devote the early hours of prayer this coming year to seeking, prayerfully, God’s guidance on the next focus of your life.

And that means she’s challenging me  to find God’s purpose after my 90th birthday  in February for the next season of my life

Imagination at Work.

Many of the characters in my book, Daughters of Deliverance  are real.  They are not  famous, but people who played a part in a true story.  As I did the research I dug around to find more details, but often I had very little facts  to bring these people alive in the book. That’s when the fictional side of the story breaks in — the fun part when my imagination takes over.

If you read my book, Daughters of Deliverance-, you’ll remember  Ella Gilchrist, the young missionary doctor who came down with tuberculosis in China. I found  her  mentioned in a few articles about Katharine Bushnell’s early life in China and  when Kate accompanied Ella home  where she  eventually died of TB.

Of course, as I wrote about her illness, the difficult sea voyage and train ride across America to Denver. Ella grew to be  a real person in my mind.  I could see her perspiring under the mosquito net  at Kuikiang mission, and shivering with fever on the uncomfortable train journey. Never complaining, always wanting to serve Jesus, apologizing to cause Kate more work.  But she only lived in my imagination until a week ago when I received an email from my friend Mimi.

Mim encouraged her friend Karen to read Daughters of Deliverance — and there Karen discovered that her great-great aunt, Ella Gilchreist (CORRECT SPELLING !)  worked with Dr Bushnell at the Methodist Mission in Kuikiang, China.  Of course, Karen had never met her Great-great Aunt Ella, but she’d heard stories about her — and, SHE HAD A PICTURE.

I finally got to meet Dr. Ella– and she looked amazingly like the image I carried in my mind. If you haven’t read Daughters of Deliverance yet,  keep this picture and when you meet Ella in the story, bring it out. Do you think  my Ella in the book matches her picture?

 

 

 

An idea for the men on your list? What?

This morning after church one of the young mothers stopped me in the hall to tell me, “My husband is reading your book and he really likes it”  We  discussed  the cover which she said was  “girly,” but the subject matter –“white slavery” (today’s trafficking)– is of interest to both male and female.

Before Daughters of Deliverance launched last December, I sent the PDF to my son  who is teaching overseas. (Sons are very direct and honest so I was a bit leery of what he might say.) He  remarked he really liked the book, but he thought that I was a bit hard on men, that there weren’t good men in the story.  I reminded him of Kate’s wise father, the contractor for the Evanston lighthouse, still standing today; or Senator Fitch who rallied the Wisconsin legislature  to pass a law against the den keepers;  or even David, the young medical student who wanted to ask her parents for permission to court her. My son  admitted there were some good men in the story, but that they were overshadowed by men like Blonger who ruled the streets of Chicago’s Hell’s Half Acre.  I still hear him say, “Mom, I didn’t think such things went on in the nineteenth century.”

I suspect few men will read Daughters of Deliverance,  or its sequel, The Queen’s Daughters,” launched this past September, because they think it’s about   girls.  And the main character is a woman, Katharine Bushnell, the historic heroine of the story. She was a famous activist against sex slavery and a  woman of prayer and obedience to God’s call on her life (sordid as it may seem at times.)

Two men have written endorsements for these books. Larry Andrews is the president of Partners International which, among other ministries, repatriates girls kidnapped into sex slavery.  Dr. Dan Rickett serves as executive vice president for She Is Safe.

Christmas is almost here.   Perhaps you could give one of the men in your life — husband, brother, son–a copy of Destined for Loyalty or The Queen’s Daughters.  Tell them they are based on the true story of a  woman in the nineteenth century who obeyed God and went through danger and hardship to rescue girls out of evil situations that are still going on today.

And, Oh yes, the books are available as Kindle ebooks in India and England!

 

 

 

Praise for The Queen’s Daughters

Occasionally I’ve found that someone else can describe the purpose of my books more clearly than I can.  This is the case with  an endorsement I received for The Queen’s Daughters.

The future for girls would look brighter if we all took to heart the wisdom of  The Queen’s Daughters. It is not the hideous thought of sexual abuse that changes the future for girls.  It is the love and persistent effort of men and women like Katharine Bushnell whose story inspired the second of two novels by Lorry Lutz.  To journey with Katharine Bushnell into the uncharted territory of shielding girls from sexual slavery is not only profoundly eye opening,  it is deeply inspiring.

Daniel Rickett, Ph.D.

Executive Vice President, She Is Safe, Inc.

 I’m impressed that this endorsement was written by a man.  Generally historical novels, especially about women, are read by women.  But when men read Katharine’s story they are incredulous about the abuse women and girls suffer — and that it’s been going on so long.  Katharine was a pioneer in the late nineteenth century to expose the abuse, and to courageously get “in your face” with politicians and powerful men who could do something about it.

Go to The Queen’s Daughters on Amazon.  I hear they plan to raise the price for the print book soon.  Watch for special offers for free or 99c e-books. As a writer I feel cheapened to see my hard work sold at that price– but I understand it helps sales. And it’s great for my readers.

Dan Rickett is just one of other men who have found Kate’s story challenging. If you’re a wife, you might add this book to your husband’s Christmas gifts, or read it together. I promise you there are no “purple patches” (salacious scenes). The story is set in the Victorian era!