Fred, Texas that is. A little East Texas town east of Huntsville.
A few years ago, 2003, I ran across a review of a book by Brad Whittington called Welcome To Fred. I decided it sounded interesting and went on Half.com and ordered it. It was an interesting book that was hard to put down.
This last Thursday I was in a small store in Red River, NM and found the sequel to Welcome To Fred which is called Living With Fred. I bought it and am reading it now. Turns out Whittington has written a trilogy for the Fred books:
Review: Welcome To Fred
"I was indeed in Ma Barker's class, who turned out to be Mrs. Barker, a middle-aged white woman and not, as far as I could tell, the matriarch of a bloodthirsty outlaw gang. But you have to admit, being a fifth-grade teacher would have been a great cover."
Mark Cloud is a teen, and a preacher's kid (PK), working his way through his teenage years. He is trying to understand what God means in his life, if at all, and how he might know that God is in his life. It takes a homeless person touching life and the events after that to show Mark that God can and does work in our lives and it is never how we expect.
This little book was a great read and I was blown away by the message it sent.
Review: Living With Fred
"There are times in life when you wonder if you have screwed everything up--when you think that if some bored biographer decided to chronicle your existence, it would turn out to be a dismal account of one mistake after another."
Mark Cloud returns from a family vacation that ended in the first book (Welcome To Fred) to find that he is not the only one touched by God that summer. And that "walking the talk" is not only hard but confusing. This time with his life crossing paths with a WWII/bootlegger shows Mark that not all "Believers" walk the talk and as with Jesus they will persecute you because they do not understand or like you. This book has moments that are definitely funnier than the first book. So funny I was laughing out loud just relating to the scene.
Also the this book left me with questions of right and wrong and what should we do about it. It was a better read than the first.
Brad Whittington is a very good writer who can really develop characters and tell a great story. I cannot wait to get my hands on the third book.
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