A Christmas Journey Home Virtual Book Tour, October 2011

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Join Kathi Macias, author of the Christian contemporary seasonal novel, A Christmas Journey Home (New Hope Publishers, October 5, 2011), as she virtually tours the blogosphere in October 2011 on her ninth virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!

About Kathi Macias

Kathi Macias photo Kathi Macias is a multi-award winning writer who has authored more than 30 books and ghostwritten several others. A former newspaper columnist and string reporter, Kathi has taught creative and business writing in various venues and has been a guest on many radio and television programs. Kathi is a popular speaker at churches, women’s clubs and retreats, and writers’ conferences, and won the 2008 Member of the Year award from AWSA (Advanced Writers and Speakers Association). Kathi “Easy Writer” Macias lives in Homeland, CA, with her husband, Al, where the two of them spend their free time buzzing around in their new ride: Al’s 2005 sunburst orange Corvette. Here latest releases are Deliver Me From Evil and A Christmas Journey Home.

You can find out more about Kathi’s writing and speaking at www.kathimacias.com

About A Christmas Journey Home

During Isabella Alcantara’s seventh month of pregnancy, her parents and siblings are murdered in gang- and drug-related violence, simply because their home was targeted by mistake. Isabella knows she was spared only because she now lives in a different location, but she knows too that the same thing could easily happen to her and her husband, Francisco. When her grandfather offers to hire a “coyote” to bring them across the border to America, she agrees. But Francisco and Isabella are abandoned by the coyote and left to die. Francisco then valiantly sacrifices himself to get Isabella to safety. Homeless, nearly penniless, pregnant, and alone, Isabella determines to find a way to honor her promise to her beloved husband.

Living on one of the smaller spreads along the Arizona border, Miriam Nelson becomes furious with God and turns from her faith when her border patrol agent husband, David, is killed in a skirmish with drug smugglers. Though her mother and young son do their best to woo her back from the anger and bitterness that have overtaken her, they make little headway.

Two widows—one driven by fear and a promise, the other by bitterness and revenge—must make their journeys along different pathways, but with the same destination: a barn full A Christmas Journey Home cover of animals that stands waiting for them on Christmas Eve. Forced to face their personal demons, Isabella and Miriam soon discover a common yearning that will bind them together in a most miraculous way.

Read an excerpt!

PROLOGUE
Isabella shivered, her teeth chattering as she huddled against the frigid night air, doing her best to burrow her backside into Francisco’s embrace. How could her esposo sleep in such harsh conditions? She and her husband had not eaten in nearly three days, they were almost out of water, and now she felt as if they would surely freeze to death before morning. And yet his even breathing, blowing warm against the back of her neck, assured her that her beloved had indeed escaped their dilemma for at least a few hours.

Isabella wished she could do the same. During the daylight hours, when her feet burned with each tortuous step, she imagined that she could fall asleep in an instant if given half the chance. But when the desert sun, still hot in mid-autumn, finally sank below the flat, dismal horizon and the night winds blew mercilessly upon them, sleep eluded her. True, Francisco did everything he could to protect her from the elements, even using his body to shield her as they sought meager shelter under a small rock overhang or behind a sand dune, but it was never enough. They were going to die; she was sure of it. She and her husband of eleven months would perish in the middle of the Arizona desert, with only the scavengers to dispose of their remains.

A slight flutter in her stomach reminded her that death would come to three of them, not just two. The baby that had been growing in her stomach for seven months and that less than a week earlier had kicked with strength and determination now grew weaker by the day.

Perhaps it is best, she told herself. It was a foolish dream to think we could escape the violence and poverty of our home country and find a new life here, north of the border. My abuelo meant well, but we should never have listened to him…should never have taken his money and given it to the coyote….

The ominous glare of the coyote, the man who had promised to take them safely to the United States but who instead had stolen their money and left them to die in the desert, danced through her memory, but she pushed it aside. Instead she focused on the beloved face of her grandfather, her abuelo, and fought the hot tears that stung her eyes as she wished yet again that she and Francisco were back in Don Alfredo’s casita, sharing a simple meal of tortillas and frijoles with the leathery-skinned old man Isabella had adored since she was a tiny girl.

Despite her discomfort, the memory of her abuelo’s face brought a smile to her lips, as she snuggled closer into her esposo’s embrace. But then another memory, the horror of what had driven Don Alfredo to the point of pleading with them to flee across the border, wiped away her smile and once again brought tears to Isabella’s weary eyes.

Read the reviews!

In A Christmas Journey Home, Macias melds a poignant nativity story with life’s gritty reality to portray Christ’s hope even in the most desperate situations. A must for your Christmas list!

–Patti Lacy, Author of The Rhythm of Secrets and What the Bayou Saw

Suspenseful and bittersweet, with A Christmas Journey Home Kathi Macias has given us a new kind of Christmas story taken straight from the headlines, a poignant and compelling reminder that it took a baby in a manger to show us how to truly love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

– Athol Dickson, Christy and Audie award winning author of Lost Mission and The Opposite of Art

Kathi Macias has earned a reputation for crafting stories that feature believable characters who face true-to-life situations, and she does it again in A CHRISTMAS JOURNEY HOME. Readers will quickly identify with Isabella and Miriam–very different women, forever changed by heartache and loss–and find themselves forever changed by Macias’ powerful, spirit-charged story. Definitely a “keeper!”

-Loree Lough, award-winning author of 80 books, including From Ashes to Honor, September, 2011, #1 in the First Responders series

Kathi Macias has written a stirring story of sacrifice, loss, and grace,found in her beautiful new novel, A Christmas Journey Home. Miriam and Isabella, women as different from one another as night and day, separately and together discover the true meaning of Christ’s birth through a shared experience of love given and received.

-Karen O’Connor, award-winning author of 70 published books, including The Upside of Downsizing, Harvest House, 2011

Watch the trailer on YouTube!

A Christmas Journey Home Virtual Book Tour Schedule

Monday, October 17th

Book reviewed at Broken Teepee

Tuesday, October 18th

Book reviewed and giveaway at Five Alarm Book Reviews

Book reviewed at Splashes of Joy

Wednesday, October 19th books

 Book reviewed at Finding Hope through Fiction

 

Thursday, October 20th

Book reviewed at Reviews from the Heart

Friday, October 21st

Book reviewed at Life with Karen

Book reviewed at Pitching Pencils

Saturday, October 22nd

Interviewed at A Book and A Chat Blog Talk Radio Show with Storyheart

Monday, October 24th

Book reviewed at Hywela Lyn Blog

Tuesday, October 25th

Book reviewed at Reading Frenzy

Wednesday, October 26th

Book reviewed at By the Book

Book reviewed at The Phantom Paragrapher

Thursday, October 27th

Book reviewed and giveaway at The Book Connection

Book reviewed at MysteriesEtc

Friday, October 28th

Book reviewed at Debbie’s Book Bag

Book reviewed at One Day at a Time

Kathi Macias’  A CHRISTMAS JOURNEY HOME VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR OCTOBER ’11 will officially begin on October 17 and end on October 28, 2011. This tour is now full. Thank you for your interest!

If you would like to book your own virtual book tour with us, click here to find out how!


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