Earning Innocence

Think of the most memorable week of your life. Was it tragic? Joyous? Heartbreaking? Inspiring? A combination of emotions swirled together and splattered across your heart, soul, and mind? Reverend James Wheeler writes and reflects on such a monumental week. In the pages of his journal, he searches for peace in the shadows of the past and struggles with his current challenges. A man of tested faith, he hopes in the unseen and wrestles with paradox. As a Moravian pastor, husband, and father, Wheeler strives to embrace his loved ones, even as his anxieties threaten to push them away. Will he glimpse wholeness and harmony? Will he come to know healing? Earning Innocence invites readers to wrestle with such questions and view their lives through the lens of friends, family, and faith. James Wheeler’s aha!-moment is our revelation: certain stories are like candlewicks--common, ordinary, and seemingly of little value. Yet the candlewick carries the light.

Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of Take My Hand: A Theological Memoir and Parables of Parenthood: Interpreting the Gospels with Family. He is the pastor of New Dublin Presbyterian Church in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Earning Innocence is his first work of fiction and he plans to revisit the same characters in future books.