A Blessing at the Back of the Book
This photo shows me right after reading the Author’s Note at the end of The Green Ember Book IV: Ember’s End for the audiobook.
I wrote that note in a mall parking lot late at night. We were driving home from a church service and picking up a car we had left in the parking lot to meet up and drive together as a family. I was alone. I had been thinking the whole drive back from church (a long drive at that time). The note did kind of flow out, and I am grateful that I was able to say just what I wanted to.
It’s too long to post here, and it belongs where it is, waiting for those precious readers who have finished the series, but I’ll share a small excerpt here:
“…So, thank you for reading. And thank you for the generous way you have read and received these stories. There is a generosity both of host and of guest, and when both act from love, a feeling of being at home prevails for both. In awkward meetings, neither party feels ‘at home.’
“I have long viewed storytelling in general, and The Green Ember Series in particular, as an opportunity for hospitality. These stories belong to my family, and sharing them has been a joy. That others ‘feel at home’ with our adventures makes us happy, like finding that our guests have been genuinely comfortable, refreshed, and at ease in our house.
“We are grateful. I am grateful. Because it’s been more than simply me inviting you into our home; it’s I (through the books) who have been invited again and again into home after home, and heart after heart. Your homes. Your hearts. What an incomparable honor. That kids (and families) all over the world have cherished these stories is an honor I can barely comprehend. I would deny that it’s true, but I have it thousands of times over in their own handwriting.”
God bless you, friends. There’s a longer blessing at the end of the Author’s Note in Ember’s End. I hope you find it.
Thanks for welcoming my series—our series—into your lives and homes and hearts; thank you for allowing me this incredible privilege.
Your friend and mine,
Sam
The Green Ember books are all amazing! Ember’s End is my very favorite book ever. All the characters are great (especially Helmer!). Thank you for these books. God bless you!
I definitely wept like a baby as I finished reading the last parts of Embers End to my children. What an amazing story. My favorite chapter in the book is “Accepted” and the story of Helmer’s redemption from The Green Ember to Embers End is incredibly powerful.
The blessing in the author’s note of Ember’s End was beautiful and deeply touching. Thank you, Sam!
Thank you so much for the blessing and prayers at the end of the book. I’m slowly slowly writing a little novel but keep stopping because Daddy God is teaching me through writing – like He is the big author who has written pain into my story because He knows the other side, He sees the ripple effect that I can’t see and it is out of great love that pain and hardship has been written in.
Your prayer that we find joy in being characters and that it’s not all about us struck a chord. Thank you for the prayer and for sharing it with us. I’m so grateful.
The Green Ember is the best thing that I’ve ever read! Besides the Bible though
Conflicted and confused about the religious system presented in Green Ember. I have loved and enjoyed so much of the books with my children. But the religious system and the chants presented in the book seem decidedly un-Christian. Unless I am reading it wrong, it seems like the religious system that gets hunted at throughout the books is not even monotheistic. Why were Flint and Fae not created by a Great Leaper? (That would have been enough to calm my worries.) Why does the blind tunneler rabbit call himself the “Truth” with a capital T? That seems to be an anti-Christ claim given the character who makes it. I really want to love these books, but every time the religious system gets flushed out, it worries and perplexes me. If someone could explain this to me, I would honestly love it. I sincerely want to love these books, but I just can’t comprehend what the author was going for here.