Best-selling novelist Karen Kingsbury says she believes her books have succeeded because they include an element – faith – that many other novels omit.
Kingsbury’s books have sold more than 25 million copies and have been made into television series and movies, including ones on the Hallmark Channel and Pure Flix.
“A story well-told has the physical, intellectual, emotional and the spiritual content,” Kingsbury told Christian Headlines. “So I feel like a lot of people they are afraid of the spiritual, they just cut it out, which makes it – to me – a more shallow story even it's a $100 million budget. We have the privilege to tell stories from a Christian point of view.”
As a writer “who can embrace the element that’s spiritual … I can lean into it,” she added.
Kingsbury and her son Tyler Russell recently released a children’s book, Being Baxters. Her next novel, Just Once, is scheduled to be released on Nov. 14.
Her latest television series, A Thousand Tomorrows, launched this year on Pure Flix.
A story can include drama and realism, she said, without being graphic. For example, A Thousand Tomorrows implies that the lead character, a single man who is a cowboy, sleeps with other women.
“Cody's the guy that takes some girls casually from the bar when he's out on the circuit [in] different towns, [but] we don't have to show that – we understand what that is, we understand what goes on in bedrooms,” she said. “So we can just show that the girl is leaving his house in the morning, fully dressed, and we go, ‘Oh, he’s that kind of guy.’ We can't cheapen it, but we also can select what we show.”
The realistic element, she said, also includes how the cowboys entertain themselves after a bullfight.
“They're cowboys and they're bull riders. They're going out and having drinks after a rodeo. That's real. Like, if they were to go out and have iced tea, people are gonna say, ‘Come on.’ And then they don't believe the story.”
“I love Jesus more than anything,” Kingsbury added. “My worldview is completely informed by my love for Scripture. But if you don't tell an honest story, you've lost people.”
A story of redemption, Russell said, must include an element of brokenness and sin.
“He has to come from somewhere in order to … open up his heart to the Lord,” Russell said. “... We are Christians, we do see things through a Christian lens. But I think that that doesn't always have to be perfect and tied up at the end. That's not real life. … Not everything has the happy ending this side of heaven that we would like. … We know that God, even in our ugliness and in our brokenness, He can redeem it.”
Photo courtesy: ©Pure Flix, used with permission.
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
