We are pleased to announce that Instant Apostle title Coming Home to Dad has reached the finals of the Woman Alive Readers’ Choice Award at this year’s Christian Resources Together Retreat. Coming Home to Dad is the fifth Instant Apostle title to be shortlisted for the Woman Alive award in just two years, and is the second to reach the finals after K A Hitchin’s novel The Key of All Unknown also did so in 2017.
Coming Home to Dad is a moving autobiographical case study of one girl, Amanda, and her brother who were impacted by family breakdown. It presents a child’s perspective on divorce and separation, tracing the trajectory of Amanda’s and her brother’s lives following this trauma and how Amanda was led on a path to wholeness.
Separated from her mum at the age of six and forced to live with a harsh stepmother, Amanda learnt at a young age to rely on herself and depend on no one. Although living under the same roof, her father was distant and uninvolved – his was a house but not a home. Eventually, sent back to live with her mum on a tough council estate, she became increasingly estranged from her dad until finally, in her eighteenth year, he disowned her.
Driven by questions about the meaning and value of her life, and coming to terms with her brother’s schizophrenia, Amanda began asking searching questions about identity that led her on a life-changing journey. She could never have imagined how this would culminate in an unexpected and powerful encounter with God as Father – and dad – an encounter that would mark the beginning of a healing process and see her finding her true home.
Amanda’s story also raises issues of justice surrounding family breakdown and mental health. It is relevant not just to those personally caught up in family breakdown but to those who seek to help them.
Amanda says, ‘I hope Coming Home to Dad will comfort the fatherless, give them hope and encourage them to seek their true home with God as Father.’