Sometimes, a leap of faith requires three revolutions and a perfect landing. When seventeen-year-old, Shay Gerrard becomes the newest US ladies' figure-skating champion, she is one step closer to realizing her dream of winning Olympic gold. Everything goes as planned until a representative of the State Department arrives at Shay's home with stunning news: Shay's estranged father has been arrested in Beijing for attending an illegal house church. Shay insists it must be a mistake. Her father was an avowed atheist. What would he be doing at a house church in China? When the news breaks that a US Olympian's father has been imprisoned for his religious beliefs in the host city of the Olympics, Shay is swept up in a political and media firestorm that will follow her to Beijing and threaten her Olympic dream. Shay has never been a believer, but before the Games are over, Shay Gerrard will stun the world and discover that God often uses the unlikeliest people for his greatest good.
Sometimes, the unlikeliest friendship is the one that changes everything. “Nixon Bliss thought I couldn’t speak without borrowed words, that my useless legs dangled because I was made of wood. It makes sense to me now, the way his eyes fixed on me when my father lifted me out of the car, eyes that couldn’t believe what they were seeing, an illusion as if a magician had pulled a Jew out of a hat instead of a rabbit. I had no idea Nixon wanted to be a ventriloquist, or that I was the spitting image of Jerry Mahoney, or that Jerry Mahoney was Nixon’s hero. My name is Isaac Harpey Mendelson, and I am a real boy.” Yes, Isaac Harpey Mendelson was indeed a real boy. Along with his best friend, Nixon Bliss, and a cast of childhood friends, they play in their New Jersey cul-de-sac at a time when life was much simpler. Yet beneath the surface, evil reared its ugly head. Nearly six decades later, Nixon is now a recent widower and pastors a local church in the same neighborhood. During his summer sermon, he retells the story to his congregation of that iconic time and how it changed their lives. Told with humor, compassion, and sentimentality, the chapters alternate between past and present. The engaging yet down-to-earth story of Harpey Mendelson will captivate you from the very first sentence.
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