Eden's Books
The Road to Bethabara
Liora is suffocating from the effects of her rebellion from Judaism. During her five years of infertility, she turned to a pagan god, and that ignited the flame that killed her first husband, Mikael. The only hope that keeps her from being consumed by guilt is her chance to make a sin offering at the Temple during the Feast of Tabernacles.
She is now a second wife in a Levirate Marriage to Mikael’s abusive brother, Tzuriel, and when he forbids her from traveling to Jerusalem for the eighth year in a row, she has to decide if sneaking behind his back to complete her repentance is worth risking his wrath.
Her decision leads to unforeseen consequences of humiliation, rejection, and a crisis of faith that threatens to unhinge her. Will she choose to abandon the God of Abraham forever? Is there any hope her blackened soul can be redeemed?
The Road to Bethabara is a journey of repentance and learning to put all our trust in the Lord and no one else, no matter what happens.
Why Write Religious Historical Fiction?
As an undergradute student, Eden attended the BYU Jerusalem Center study abroad and lived in Israel for 4 months. It sounds cliche to say that experience changed her life, so imagine this instead. You're in your kitchen reading tonight's dinner recipe off your phone. You can see it just fine, but your eyes are tired from staring at your computer all day at work, so you switch on the dark mode. The bright white text on top of the stark black background changes your perspective. Your eyes are drawn to a review in the bottom corner suggesting you use olive oil instead of vegetable oil, and that small tweak improves the entire meal for you.
You might be wondering why spend an entire paragraph on this analogy, but the reason is all about perspective. Your vision wasn't blurry in light mode, the baking directions didn't sharpen in dark mode, but what you focused on--what you saw--changed. Despite the information on your screen still being the same.
That's what happened to Eden when she went to Jerusalem. She'd studied the Gospel of Christ her whole life, she'd served a mission and taught it to other people, growing deeper in her testimony. In fact, she didn't think it could go deeper than it had in the mission field. But as she took her classes and toured around the Holy Land, she was amazed at the insights she learned from her professors. It was inspiring to read about David fighting Goliath from a desk in class and then the next day to go to the Valley of Elah and point at the ground and say, "That's where Goliath fell. That's where David conquered him with God at his side, stopping the Philistines from marching through this valley from that direction over there and into Bethlehem over there where they'd have access to all the land of Israel. Young little David was the final obstacle the Philistines had to overcome to enter the gateway into Israel and easily wipe out the Israelites. And he stopped them."
The historical and cultural contexts Eden learned shifted her focus to new details, making the scriptures both more beautiful and powerful. The stories didn't change, but new things spoke to her. Things like what a person's hebrew name told about them, or the significance of the day of the year an event happened, or what surrounding cultures believed about their own gods and how that influenced the way the Israelites viewed Jehovah. Looking at the scriptures from an academic perspective made her fall even deeper in love with the Gospel.
So she knew she had to share what she'd learned.
Inspiration for The Road to Bethabara
Four months fresh off her mission, Eden walked where Jesus walked. Surrounded by rich religious sites, she found herself reflecting on the past 18 months when she'd worn the Savior's name on her chest and represented Him in everything she did. After teaching people daily about baptism, that ordinance became truly holy to her. Because of that, she was eager to go to Jordan and visit the site where John the Baptist first instituted baptism in the New Testament.
When she arrived on that sacred shore, she was overcome with a profound sense of peace and love from God. She knew how important it was to Him that each of His children had the chance to be forgiven for their sins and start a new life. Clean, and whole. The name for the city beside the River Jordan took on new significance for her.
Bethabara, or the house of the ford, was a place of crossing. Perhaps at one time it had been a literal ford crossing over the river, but for Eden, she saw how it had been a place of spiritual crossing. When John's followers entered the waters with him and covenanted to follow The Christ, they crossed over a symbolic ford. They left behind their old ways, their old habits, and began on a new path that would lead them closer to God and closer to the Messiah.
It wasn't lost on Eden how dreary of a journey it was to get to the lushious Jordan River, though. Hidden out in the middle of a dry desert and behind dead, rolling hills, John couldn't have chosen a more foresaken place to preach. Walking by foot, it would have been a strenuous journey to see him. Just as it had been for many of the friends Eden had made on her mission, she knew that paralleled how life often felt on the way toward baptism. Hardships and trials multiplied and increased in intensity, all threatening to beat you down and make you want to give up. It took work and commitment and a whole lot of change to even make it to the flourishing river. But, after you did, and after you crossed the ford of baptism, the hope you felt for the future was priceless.
On the bus ride home from that field trip, Eden typed out her thoughts that later turned into her novel The Road to Bethabara. It tells the story of a woman weighed down with guilt from her sins. She yearns to repent, but the closer she gets, the harder it seems to become. Her symbolic and literal journey through the wilderness toward Bethabara is hard. So hard. But if she can find the grit to make it through, the peace of baptism waiting at the place of the crossing will be ever more sweet. But that is the question: can she muster the faith to get there?
To read more about the backstory of The Road to Bethabara, check out Eden's blog here.