Kingdom Lost

About the Book

Prince Jonathan has dared to marry Sarah without his parents knowing, and now he must go home and face his father. When Sarah insists that he take her with him, he doesn’t know that she has dreamed that his father kills him. He begrudgingly agrees, thinking he will lock her in his room once they reach the palace and go meet his father alone. Upon their arrival however, Jonathan realizes that not only their lives are in danger but also their marriage. Uncertainty once again grips his heart and he offers Sarah a bill of divorcement before their marriage is confirmed before his father’s kingdom. The setting is ancient Israel somewhere between 1150-1050 BC. Jonathan’s home is a gloomy stone fortress, located in the former Canaanite City of Gibeah. Casemated walls and a grand staircase lead to what the servants fearfully call the Lion’s Den, his father’s large, second story audience room. It is in this room that Jonathan introduces his wife to his parents, and is the place where he would have died had Sarah not been with him. “The beloved of the LORD shall dwell in safety beside you; and the LORD shall cover you all the day long, and he shall dwell between your shoulders.” The words of the Benjamite blessing, spoken by Moses over five generations before, continues to drift through Jonathan’s thoughts. When his grandfather dies suddenly, and his father’s mind continues to deteriorates into madness, Jonathan is convinced the blessing was meant as a promise to him. When his father does not obey God concerning the battle with Amalek, the prophet Samuel puts a curse upon the entire house of Saul. As Samuel gazes sadly into Jonathan’s eyes, he promises him that, if he continues to hope, Shiloh will come to sheol (the grave) and get him. When Jonathan learns that a very dear friend of his has been killed in this battle because Saul commanded him to scale a city wall in order to “test his God”, this promise seems all that the young prince has left to believe in. Close to despairing, he comes to the realization that Shiloh is not an altar or a building that can be destroyed by his enemies, whoever they are, but an individual hope in his heart, like the eternal flame at the altar. “Grandfather was right after all,” he tells his mother. “We must tell the next generation, and the next, and the next, until someday a worthy king shall come to deliver us.”

About the Author

Tucked away as she is in the scenic Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mariposa California, life has been mostly pleasant for Mary. She is married to a man she loves; has two sons who have given her no cause to worry; and now has three beautiful granddaughters reaching the age of maturity who have followed in their parent’s footsteps. Yet, even in the midst of all these blessings, Mary knows what it is to have life crash about her ears. The Curse is the third in a series of six Biblical novels Mary has written about one of the least talked about yet most notable princes in the Bible. A once living, breathing, person, who left us an example of how to get up and walk on for the number of years that God has given to us.