Spotlight on Janette Oke: A Guest Post by Brave Author Priscilla Bettis

I am excited to welcome author Priscilla Bettis to the blog today. She has been a regular commenter and supportive part of the Brave Authors group this year. Today, she is reviewing an upcoming release by an author whose name you might recognize!

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Janette Oke is a brave author. She’s 89 years old. Her husband passed away in 2022. At this point, ordinary writers would have retired. Janette Oke is far from ordinary. Not only did she keep writing, but also she pushed herself to learn and grow. After decades of writing Christian Americana fiction and historical romance, she’s trying a new genre. Her latest book, The Pharisee’s Wife, is Biblical fiction.

It’s not just a new story setting. Oke’s vibe is different. In lieu of her heartwarming heroines and swoony male protagonists, The Pharisee’s Wife features a child bride, horrific persecution of Christians, and a mother that is bitter and cruel.

The book comes out on March 11, 2025. I scored an advance copy from NetGalley. Oke bravely eschews the popular advice for authors to go into deep point of view and stay there. Oke skillfully pulls back from one character, dances in the heads of several during an omniscient point-of-view transition, then dives into another character’s thoughts. It’s smooth. And natural. Only an author as experienced as Oke can do that without upsetting the reader.

She also bravely creates her own story structure for The Pharisee’s Wife. (The cat is not saved.) In fact, in her author’s notes at the end of the book, she acknowledges that the story doesn’t really have a climax. The last part of the book is largely summary narration, yet it fits. It points to the ongoing story of the characters’ relationship with Jesus beyond the final pages of the book, a story that extends to our lives today.

The Pharisee’s Wife particularly interested me because of the bitter, cruel mother. Too often we place fictional mother characters in a cubby hole along with nurturing, and kind, and self-sacrificing. After all, a mother is the beating heart that makes a house a home. But women, even moms, are sinners and can be the lost character or even the evil antagonist in a story … as in real life. Kudos to Oke for writing this story with her eyes wide open.

In my own writing, I recently drafted STITCHES THAT BIND, a Christian novel featuring a protagonist who must grapple with a cruel mother and engage with characters who despise the church. The manuscript is resting now before I go back for a second draft with fresh eyes. I don’t expect to live up to Oke’s storytelling abilities, but I am thankful for her brave example.

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Priscilla Bettis is an avid reader and a joyful writer. She is a former secular horror author who experienced a series of events that can only be described as God knocking her upside the head. Now Priscilla writes Christian short stories and poetry. She is working on her first literary Christian novel.

Priscilla lives in small-town Texas with her two-legged and four-legged family members.

Priscilla is a reviewer at The Well Read Fish, a Christian fiction review blog: https://thewellreadfish.com.

She chats about life and writing on X: https://twitter.com/PriscillaBettis

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Well, I’ve certainly been encouraged by both Janette Oke’s story and Priscilla’s. Do you love discovering new-to-you authors? That is one of the things I do here on the Aubrey Taylor Books Blog. Posts happen between 1 and 3 times a month, and focus primarily on writing, German history and travel, as well as films and books. If you want to be informed about the latest, drop your email below!