What’s it Like When the Man You Married is Married to God?
Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s Debut Novel
Looks Inside the Lives of Pastors’ Wives
How would you react if one day, completely out of the blue,
your husband told you he wanted to go into ministry? What’s it like when the
man you married is married to God? These are the questions Lisa Takeuchi Cullen wrestles with in her debut novel, Pastors’
Wives (Plume/April 30, 2013/ISBN 978-0452298828/$16.00). Cullen tells the story of three women whose
lives converge and intertwine at a Southern evangelical megachurch — a world
most of us know only from the outside.
Cullen
passionately portrays the private lives of pastors’ wives, caught between the
consuming demands of faith, marriage, duty and love. Ruthie follows her Wall
Street husband from New York to Magnolia, a suburb of Atlanta, when he hears a
calling to serve at a megachurch called Greenleaf. Reeling from the death of
her mother, Ruthie suffers a crisis of faith—in God, in her marriage and in
herself. Candace is Greenleaf’s “First Lady,” a force of nature who’ll stop at
nothing to protect her church and her charismatic husband. Ginger, married to
Candace’s son, struggles to play dutiful wife and mother while burying her
calamitous past. When their lives collide during a fateful event that threatens
the survival of all that is precious to them, each will ask herself: What is
the price of loving a man of God? Each will answer that question in a different
way.
The
inspiration for Pastors’s Wives came
to Cullen several years ago while working at Time magazine. Her editor assigned her a story on pastors’ wives
and asked her to attend a pastors’ conference. Given her Catholic upbringing, Cullen
had no idea of what to expect. What she found was that life as a pastor’s wife
was much more complex than she ever could have imagined. Even after her story
was published, the research didn’t end, nor did her relationships with the
women she met along the way. However, she still wasn’t quite sure what she
would write next.
Around
this same time, the death of Lisa’s parents and other intense life changes lit
in Lisa a profound need to reconcile her faith. Encouraged by her agent to use
her reporting and experiences to write a novel, she set to work on Pastors’ Wives. Through the characters
and their journeys in faith, Lisa examined her own. “Not everybody gets to
process their faith through characters of their own creation, and I feel
immensely blessed that I had Ruthie, Candace and Ginger to guide me,” Cullen
reflects. “My journey continues; mine is an ongoing education. My hope is that Pastors’ Wives will spark thought and
conversation about the role of faith, love and duty in your lives.”
This
spring is an exciting time for Cullen. In addition to the release of Pastors’ Wives, she recently sold her TV
pilot for The Ordained to CBS, and
production is currently in process. “I wrote The Ordained right after I sold Pastors’
Wives. Clearly, the subject of faith was still on my mind. In the case of
my TV pilot, what inspired me was my father’s story: What’s it like to start
your life over as a man in your mid-30s?”
Join Lisa Takeuchi Cullen for her
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Advance Praise
“As
a journalist, I’ve been trying for a decade to help readers understand the
emotional nuance and social complexity of life inside a megachurch. Nothing I’ve read even comes close to Cullen’s
shrewdly observed and utterly empathic writing in Pastors’ Wives. That said, by
Chapter Two I had completely forgotten that I was reading fiction written by a
crack reporter, I was too busy alternating between fits of laughter and
multiple-Kleenex sobs. I can’t stop
thinking about what this book has to say about love, struggle, and commitment,
not just to a faith, but to our families and our very selves.”
~ Lauren Sandler, author of Righteous
“Lisa
Takeuchi Cullen’s debut novel, Pastors’ Wives, offers readers a
stirring and humorous look beyond the secrets shrouding the mega-business that
is church in America. Pastors’ Wives is a tender reminder
that our ability to trust God is compromised when we can’t trust one another.”
~ Karen Spears
Zacharias, author of Will Jesus Buy Me a Doublewide?
“When
I received Pastor’s Wives by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, I had my guard
up against stereotyped and caricatured portrayal. I was so wrong! Cullen, a
former foreign correspondent and staff writer for TIME magazine, reveals a
remarkable depth of truth and strength of character within the women of
Pastor’s Wives. I was captivated by their stories, cheered them on as friends,
and was terribly disappointed when it ended. Novel Rocket and I give it our
highest recommendation. This is a must read for everyone who attends a church.”
~ Ane Mulligan, Senior Editor of Novel Rocket
“I
couldn’t put down Pastor’s Wives once I started. Cullen
is a fabulous writer, and I was mesmerized by the women and their challenges.
Faith never has easy answers, and I loved how she showed both sides of the
Christian walk.”
~ Colleen Coble,
best-selling author of Tidewater Inn and the Rock Harbor
series, www.colleencoble.com
Lisa Takeuchi Cullen was born and raised in Kobe, Japan. Her father was a Roman
Catholic priest from Philadelphia, sent by his religious order to a provincial
city in southern Japan where he met Cullen’s mother, the coddled daughter of a
wealthy merchant. She converted, he left the priesthood to marry her, and it
all caused quite the scandal. As if in penance, they raised the four children
in strict devotion, never allowing them to miss a Mass or their turn at the
dinner-table Bible reading.
As she was in the beginning stages of writing Pastors’ Wives, several intense life
changes lit in her a profound need to reconcile her faith: the loss of her
mother to cancer, her father’s death nine months later, the birth of her second
child, and leaving her job as a staff writer at Time magazine. Cullen feels that in many ways writing Pastors’ Wives saved her. Through the
characters and their journeys in faith, she was able to examine her own.
Cullen was a foreign correspondent and staff writer for Time magazine, covering social trends,
news, arts and business in the U.S. and Asia. Her first book, Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New
American Way of Death, was about the year she spent crashing funerals and
was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. She now writes novels
and develops television pilots. Pastors’
Wives is her first novel, and Lisa recently sold a pilot about a former
priest who becomes a lawyer to CBS. Production on the first episode of The Ordained is now in production. Cullen lives in New Jersey with her husband
and two daughters.
Learn more about Lisa
Takeuchi Cullen and Pastors’ Wives at www.lisacullen.com. Readers can also friend Lisa on Facebook, become a fan on Lisa's Facebook author
page (LisaTakeuchiCullen),
or follow her on Twitter
(@LisaCullen).
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