Tuesday, August 28, 2012

House of Mercy by Erin Healy

Tour Date: Thursday, August 30th, 2012

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It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!



Today's Wild Card author is:


and the book:

Thomas Nelson (August 7, 2012)

***Special thanks to Rick Roberson of The B&B Media Group for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Erin Healy is an award-winning fiction editor who has worked with talented novelists such as James Scott Bell, Melody Carlson, Colleen Coble, Brandilyn Collins, Traci DePree, L. B. Graham, Rene Gutteridge, Michelle McKinney Hammond, Robin Lee Hatcher, Denise Hildreth, Denise Hunter, Randy Ingermanson, Jane Kirkpatrick, Bryan Litfin, Frank Peretti, Lisa Samson, Randy Singer, Robert Whitlow, and many others.

She began working with Ted Dekker in 2002 and edited twelve of his heart-pounding stories before their collaboration on Kiss, the first novel to seat her on "the other side of the desk."
Erin is the owner of WordWright Editorial Services, a consulting firm specializing in fiction book development. She is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers and the Academy of Christian Editors. She lives with her family in Colorado.



Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:


Beth has a gift of healing-which is why she wants to become a vet and help her family run their fifth-generation cattle ranch. Her father's dream of helping men in trouble and giving them a second chance is her dream too. But it only takes one foolish decision for Beth to destroy it all.

Beth scrambles to redeem her mistake, pleading with God for help, even as a mystery complicates her life. But the repercussions grow more unbearable-a lawsuit, a death, a divided family, and the looming loss of everything she cares about. Beth's only hope is to find the grandfather she never knew and beg for his help. Confused, grieving, but determined to make amends, she embarks on a horseback journey across the mountains, guided by a wild, unpredictable wolf who may or may not be real.

Set in the stunningly rugged terrain of Southern Colorado, House of Mercy follows Beth through the valley of the shadow of death into the unfathomable miracles of God's goodness and mercy.

Genre: Christian Fiction | Suspense


Product Details:
List Price: $15.99
Paperback: 284 pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Language: English
ISBN-10: 140168551X
ISBN-13: 9781401685515


AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:


Chapter 1
It wasn’t every day that an old saddle could improve a horse’s life.
That was what Beth Borzoi was thinking as she stood in the dusty tack room that smelled like her favorite pair of leather boots. In the back corner where the splintering-wood walls met, she tugged the faded leather saddle off the bottommost rung of the heavy-duty rack, where it had sat, unused and forgotten, for years.
Her little brother, Danny, would have said she was stealing the saddle. He might have called her a kleptomaniac. That was too strong a word, but Danny was fifteen and liked to throw bold words around, cocky-like, show-off rodeo ropes aimed at snagging people. She loved that about him. It was a cute phase. Even so, she had formed a mental argument against the characterization of her- self as a thief, in case she needed to use it, because Danny was too young to understand the true meaning of even stronger words like sacrifice or situational ethics.
After all, she was working in secret, in the hidden folds of a summer night, so that both she and the saddle could leave the Blazing B unnoticed. In the wrong light, it might look like a theft.
The truth was, it was not her saddle to give away. It was Jacob’s saddle, though in the fifteen years Jacob had lived at the ranch, she had never seen him use it. The bigger truth was that this saddle abandoned to tarnish and sawdust could be put to better use. The fenders were plated with silver, pure metal that could be melted down and converted into money to save a horse from suffering. Decorative silver bordered the round skirt and framed the rear housing. The precious metal had been hammered to conform to the gentle rise of the cantle in the back and the swell in the front. The lovely round conchos were studded with turquoise. Hand-tooled impressions of wild mountain f lowers covered the leather everywhere that silver didn’t.
In its day, it must have been a fine show saddle. And if Jacob valued that at all, he wouldn’t have stored it like this.
Under the naked-bulb beams of the tack room, Beth’s body cast a shadow over the pretty piece as she hefted it. She blew the dirt and dander off the horn, swiped off the cracked seat with the flat of her hand, then turned away her head and sneezed. Colorado’s dry climate had not been kind to the leather.
She wasn’t stealing. She was saving an animal’s life.
The latch on the barn door released Beth to the midnight air with a click like a stolen kiss. The saddle weighed about thirty-five pounds, which was easy to manage when snatching it off a rack and tossing it onto a horse’s back. But it would feel much heavier by the time she reached her destination. She’d parked her truck a ways off where the rumbling old clunker wouldn’t raise questions or family members sleeping in the nearby ranch house. She’d left her dog at the foot of Danny’s bed with clear orders to stay. She hoped the animal would mind.
Energized, she crossed the horses’ yard. A few of them nickered greetings at her, including Hastings, who nuzzled her empty pockets for treats. The horses never slept in the barn’s stalls unless they were sick. Even in winter they stayed in the pasture, preferring the outdoor lean-to shelters.
The Blazing B, a 6,500-acre working cattle ranch, lay to the northwest of Colorado’s San Luis Valley. The region was called a valley because this portion of the state was a Rocky Mountain ham- mock that swung between the San Juans to the west and the Sangre de Cristos to the east. But at more than seven thousand feet, it was no low-lying flatland. It was, in fact, the highest alpine valley in the world. And it was the only place in the world that Beth ever wanted to live. Having graduated from the local community college with honors and saved enough additional money for her continuing education, she planned to leave in the fall to begin her first year of veterinary school. She would be gone as long as it took to earn her license, but her long-term plan was to return as a more valuable person. Her skills would save the family thousands of dollars every year, freeing up funds for their most important task—providing a home and a hard day’s work to discarded men who needed the peace the Blazing B had to offer.
On this late May night, a light breeze stirred the alfalfa growing in the pasturelands while the cattle grazed miles away. The herds always spent their summers on public lands in the mountains while their winter feed grew in the valley. They were watched over by a pool rider, a hired man who was a bit like a cow’s version of a shepherd. He stayed with them through the summer and would bring them home in the fall.
With the winter calving and spring branding a distant memory, the streams and irrigation wells amply supplied by good mountain runoff, and the healthy alfalfa fields thickening with a June cutting in mind, the mood at the Blazing B was peaceful.
When Beth was a quarter mile beyond the barn, a bobbing light drew her attention to the west side of the pasture, where ancient cottonwood trees formed a barrier against seasonal winds and snows. She paused, her eyes searching the darkness beyond this path that she could walk blindfolded. The light rippled over cottonwood trunks, casting shadows that were indistinguishable from the real thing.
A man was muttering in a low voice, jabbing his light around as if it were a stick. She couldn’t make out his words. Then the yellow beam stilled low to the ground, and she heard a metallic thrust, the scraping ring of a shovel’s blade being jammed into the dirt.
Beth worried. It had to be Wally, but what was he doing out at this hour, and at this place? The bunkhouse was two miles away, and the men had curfews, not to mention strict rules about their access to horses and vehicles.
She left the path and approached the trees without a misstep. The moonlight was enough to guide her over the uneven terrain.
“Wally?”
The cutting of the shovel ceased. “Who wants to know?” “It’s Beth.”
“Beth who?”
“Beth Borzoi. Abel’s daughter. I’m the one who rides Hastings.” “Well, sure! Right, right. Beth. I’m sorry you have to keep telling me. You’re awfully nice about it.”
The light that Wally had set on the ground rose and pointed itself at her, as if to confirm her claims, then dropped to the saddle resting against her thighs. Wally had been at the ranch for three years, since a stroke left his body unaffected but struck his brain with a short-term memory disorder. It was called anterograde amnesia, a forgetfulness of experiences but not skills. He could work hard but couldn’t hold a job because he was always forgetting where and when he was supposed to show up. Here at the ranch he didn’t have to worry about those details. He had psychologists and strategies to guide him through his days, a community of brothers who reminded him of everything he really needed to know. Well, most things. He had been on more than one occasion the butt of hurtful pranks orchestrated by the men who shared the bunkhouse with him. It was both a curse and a blessing that he was able to forget such incidents so easily.
Beth was the only Beth at the Blazing B, and the only female resident besides her mother, but these facts regularly eluded Wally. He never forgot her father, though, and he knew the names of all the horses, so this was how Beth had learned to keep putting herself back into the context of his life.
“You’re working hard,” she said. “You know it’s after eleven.” “Looking for my lockbox. I saw him take it. I followed him here just an hour ago, but now it’s gone.”
Sometimes it was money that had gone missing. Sometimes it was a glove or a photograph, or a piece of cake from her mother’s dinner table that was already in his belly. All the schedules and organizational systems in the world were not enough to help Wally with this bizarre side effect of his disorder: whenever a piece of his mind went missing, he would search for it by digging. Dr. Roy Davis, Wally’s psychiatrist, had curtailed much of Wally’s compulsive need to overturn the earth by having him perform many of the Blazing B’s endless irrigation tasks. Even so, the ten square miles of ranch were riddled with the chinks of Wally’s efforts to find what he had lost.
“That must be really frustrating,” she said. “I hate it when I lose my stuff.”
“I didn’t lose it. A gray wolf ran off with it. I had it safe in a secret spot, and he dug it up and carried off the box in his teeth. Hauled it all the way up here and reburied it. Now tell me, what’s a wolf gonna do with my legal tender? Buy himself a turkey leg down at the supermarket?”
Wally must have kept a little cash in his box. She could under- stand his frustration. But this claim stirred up disquiet at the back of her mind. Dr. Roy would need to know if Wally was seeing things. First off, gray wolves were hardly ever spotted in Colorado. They’d been run out of the state before World War II by poachers and hos- tile ranchers, and their return in recent years was little more than a rumor. Wally might have seen a coyote. But for another thing, no wild animal dug up a man’s buried treasure and relocated it. Except maybe a raccoon.
A raccoon trying to run off with a heavy lockbox might actually be entertaining.
“Tell you what, Wally. If he’s buried it here we’ll have a better chance of finding it in the morning. When the sun comes up, I’ll help you. But they’ll be missing you at the bunkhouse about now. Let me take you back so no one gets upset when they see you’re gone.” Jacob or Dr. Roy would do bunk checks at midnight.
“Upset? No one can be as upset as I am right now.” He thrust the shovel into the soft dirt at his feet. “I saw the dog do it. I tracked him all the way here, like he thought I wouldn’t see him under this full moon. Fool dog—but who’d believe me? It’s like a freaky fairy tale, isn’t it? Well, I’d have put that box in a local vault if I didn’t have to keep so many stinkin’ Web addresses and passwords and account numbers and security questions at my fingertips.” He withdrew a small notebook from his hip pocket and waved the pages around. It was one of the things he used to keep track of details. “Maybe I’ll have to rethink that.”
Beth’s hands had become sweaty and a little cramped under the saddle’s weight. She used her right knee to balance the saddle and fix her grip. The soft leather suddenly felt like heavy gold bricks out of someone else’s bank vault.
“Well, let’s go,” she said. “I’ve got my truck right on down the lane.”
“What do you have there?” Wally returned the notebook to his pocket, hefted the shovel, and picked his way out of the under- brush, finding his way by flashlight.
“An old saddle. It’s been in the tack room for years.” She expected Wally to forget the saddle just as quickly as he would for- get this night’s adventure and her promise to help him dig in the morning.
He lifted one of the fenders and stroked the silver with his thumb. “Pretty thing. Probably worth something. Not as much as that box is worth to me, though.”
“We’ll find it,” Beth said.
“You bet we will.” Wally fell into step beside her. “Thanks for the ride back, Beth. You’re a good girl. You got your daddy in you.”
With Jacob’s old saddle resting on a blanket in the bed of her rusty white pickup, Beth followed an access road from the horse pasture by her own home down into the heart of the Blazing B.
The property’s second ranch house was located more strategically to the cattle operation, and so it was known to all as the Hub. The Hub was a practical bachelor pad. Outside, the branding pens and calving sheds and squeeze chutes and cattle trucks filled up a dusty clearing around the house. Inside, the carpets and old leather furniture, even when clean, smelled like men who believed that a hard day’s work followed by a dead sleep—in any location—was far more gratifying than a hot shower. The house was steeped in the scent stains of sweat and hay, horses and manure, tanned leather and barbecue smoke. The men who slept here lived like the bachelors they were. If their daily labors weren’t enough to impress a woman, the cowboys couldn’t be bothered with her.
Dr. Roy Davis, known affectionately by all as Dr. Roy, was a lifelong friend of Beth’s father. Years ago, after the death of Roy’s wife, Abel and Roy merged their professional passions of ranching and psychiatry and expanded the Blazing B’s purpose. It became an outreach to functional but wounded men like Wally who needed a home and a job. Dr. Roy brought his teenage son, Jacob, along. Now thirty-one, Jacob had never found reason to leave, except for the years he’d spent away at college earning multiple degrees in agriculture and animal management. Jacob had been the Blazing B’s general operations manager for more than five years.
Jacob and his father shared the Hub with Pastor Eric, who was a divorced minister, and Emory, a therapist who was once a gang leader. These men were the Borzois’ four full-time employees.
The other men who lived at the Blazing B were called “associates.” They occupied the bunkhouse, some for a few weeks and some for years. At present there were six, including Wally.
When Beth stopped her truck in front of the Hub’s porch, Wally slipped off the seat of her cab, closed the rusty door, and went directly around back to the bunkhouse. She pulled away and had reached the end of the drive when a rut jarred the truck and rattled the shovel he’d left in the truck bed.
In spite of her hurry to take Jacob’s saddle to the people who needed it, she put the truck in park, jumped out, and jogged the tool up to the house. The porch light lit the squeaky wood steps, and she took them two at a time. Jacob would see the tool in the morning when he came out to start up his own truck and head out to what- ever project was on the schedule. She’d phone him to make sure.
She was tipping the handle into the corner where the porch rail met the siding when the Hub’s front door opened and Jacob leaned out. “Past your bedtime, isn’t it?”  he said, but he was smiling at
her. Over the years they had settled into a comfortable big-brother- little-sister relationship, though Beth had never fully outgrown her adolescent crush on him.
“Found Wally digging up by the barn,” she said.
Surprise pulled his dark brows together. “Now? Where is he?” “Back in bed, I guess. He said he followed a wolf up to our place. You might want Dr. Roy to look into that. Your dad should know if Wally’s . . . seeing things.”
Jacob nodded as he stepped out the door and leaned against the house. He crossed his arms. “Coyote maybe?”
“Try suggesting that to him. And when was the last time we had a coyote down here? It’s been ages—not since Danny gave up his chicken coop.”
“I’ll mention that to Dad. It’s probably nothing. What had you out at the barn at this hour? Horses okay?”
“Fine.” Beth’s eyes swiveled down to her truck, to Jacob’s saddle, both well beyond reach of the porch light. She tried to recall all her justifications for taking the saddle, but in that moment all she could think was that she should get his permission to do it. She’d known this man more than half her life. He was kind. He was wise. He’d say yes. He’d want her to take it.
But she said, “I’m headed out to the Kandinskys’ place. They’ve got a horse who injured his eye, and it’s pretty bad. They let it go too long, you know, hoping it would correct itself, maybe wouldn’t need a big vet bill.”
“The Kandinskys have their own vet on the premises. Who called you out?”
“It’s not one of their horses, actually. It’s Phil’s. Remember him?” “Your friend from high school?”
“He’s been working there a year or so. They let him keep the horse on the property. One of the perks.”
“But he can’t use their vet?”
Beth looked at her feet. “Phil’s family can’t afford their vet. You know how that goes. We couldn’t afford him. His family doesn’t even have pets, you know. They run a grocery store. The horse is his little sister’s project. A 4H thing.”
“Well, tell Phil I said he called the right gal for the job.”
“I don’t know, Jacob. It sounds really bad. These eye things— the horse might need surgery.”
She found it unusually difficult to look at him, though she was sure he was studying her with a suspicious stare by now. But she couldn’t look at the truck either. Her eyes couldn’t find an object to rest on.
“All you can do is all you can do, Beth. That’ll be as true after you’re licensed as it is now.”
“But I want to do miracles,” she said.
He chuckled at that, though she hadn’t been joking. “Don’t we all.” He uncrossed his arms and put his hand on the doorknob, preparing to go back inside. “I heard some big-shot Thoroughbred breeder is boarding some of his studs there,” Jacob said. “Some friend of theirs passing through.”
“I heard that too.”
“Maybe that’ll be Phil’s miracle this time—an unexpected guest, someone with the right know-how or the right resources who will come to his horse’s rescue.”
“Angels unaware,” Beth said. “Something like that. Night, Beth.”
Beth didn’t want him to go just yet. “Night.”
She lingered at the door while it closed, hoping he might intuit what she didn’t have the courage to say.
When he didn’t, she committed to her original plan. She descended the steps in a quiet rush, wanting to whisk the saddle away before he could object to what he didn’t know. She wanted to be the one who did the good works, who made the incredible rescue. She couldn’t help herself. It was her father’s blood running through her heart.
On the driveway, her smooth-soled boots skimmed the dirt, whispering back to her truck.
“It’s not your right to do it,” Jacob said. Beth gasped and whirled at the sound of his voice, unexpected and loud and straight into her ear, as if he’d been standing on her shoulder. “It’s not your gift to give.”
But the ranch house door was shut tight under the cone of the porch light, and the bright window revealed nothing inside but heavy furniture and cluttered tabletops. At the back of the house, a different door closed heavily. Jacob was headed out to the bunk- house to check on Wally already.
Beth let her captured breath leave her lungs. She looked around for an explanation, because she didn’t want to accept that the words might have been uttered by a guilty conscience.
At the base of the porch steps, crouching in such darkness that its black center sank into its surroundings, was the form of an unusually large dog. Erect ears, broad head, slender body. A wolf. She had passed that spot so closely seconds ago that she could have reached out and stroked its neck.
She took one step backward. Of course, her mind was dreaming this up because Wally had suggested a wolf to her. If he hadn’t, she might have said the silhouette had the outline of a snowman. An inverted snowman guarding the house from her lies. In May.
Beth stared at it for several seconds, oddly unable to recall the landscape where she’d spent her entire life. She was distressed not to be able to say from this distance and angle whether that was a shrub planted there, or a fence post, or an old piece of equipment that hadn’t made it back into the supply shed. When the shape of its edges seemed to shift and shudder without actually moving at all, she decided that her eyes were being tricked by the darkness.
Convincing herself of this was almost as easy as justifying her saddle theft.
She turned away from the house and hurried onward, looking back only once.

Monday, August 27, 2012

31 Days to a Happy Husband by Arlene Pellicane

Tour Date: Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

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It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!



Today's Wild Card author is:


and the book:

Harvest House Publishers (August 1, 2012)

***Special thanks to Ginger Chen of Harvest House Publishers for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Arlene Pellicane is an author, speaker, and formerly served as the associate producer for Turning Point Television with Dr. David Jeremiah. Her audiobook and website Losing Weight After Baby has helped many moms achieve their physical and personal goals. Arlene and her family make their home in southern California.



Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

What does a man need most from his wife? Arlene Pellicane has identified five keys that will give wives a new appreciation and understanding of how to love and care for their mates along with practical instruction to motivate and equip wives to provide their husbands what they long for.



Product Details:
List Price: $12.99
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0736946322
ISBN-13: 9780736946322


AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:


Are You Still Dreaming?
The year was 1999 and my big moment had finally arrived. I stood holding my father’s arm, ready to make my grand entrance into the church. James and I had decided to have one of his favorite seminary professors marry us. Ours was only his second wedding to officiate, but we didn’t care about his inexperience.
Just as I approached the door leading into the sanctuary, I was shocked to hear the sound of our professor’s voice, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to bring James and Arlene together in holy matrimony.” The only problem was, I was still standing in the hall with all the bridesmaids. Our professor mistook a break in the music as his cue to begin the ceremony.
I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. Our dear professor got all the way through his introduction before realizing his error. When he got to that famous line, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” there was complete silence. Our friends and family didn’t know whether to laugh or be mortified.
At this, my aunt started playing the piano, and I was thrust through the door of the church to join my ceremony in progress. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I’d miss the beginning of my own wedding, but it sure has given us many laughs over the years.
Do you remember the day you said “I do”? I hope the ceremony didn’t start without you. Remember walking down the aisle, feeling like the happiest woman in the world? Your heart was full of dreams for the future. Are you still dreaming today?
Keep Honeymooning
So many couples told us after we tied the knot, “Just wait until you’ve been married a few years. You won’t be so lovey-dovey anymore.” But there was one lone voice who gave us the opposite advice. “Never let the honeymoon end,” he said. “It’s much easier to keep love alive than to try to revive something that has died.” We vowed to follow his advice.
Fast-forward the tape twelve years to our aha moment. James and I were teaching a young-marrieds class at our church. On the first day of class, we noticed there was not a centimeter of space in between these newlywed couples. Wives were superglued to their husbands’ sides. Eyes were locked, hands were held, hair was twirled. I looked over at my James who was sitting about a foot away from me. We, the sage teachers, needed a refresher course on touch, affection, and romance.
Most likely you know what I’m talking about. The heat of passion turns into the warmth of companionship. But that warmth, if we don’t take time to stoke the embers, can slowly turn into a cool disengagement between husband and wife. And before you know it, you’re two roommates sharing a home, a bank account, and children.
I don’t want that dull fate and neither do you. Three kids later and in our forties, James and I are learning to flirt again. The good news is you can relearn how to do all the things you used to do when you were dating. Except that instead of being lovers on cruise control, you might have to step on the gas pedal once in a while for the ride of your life.
Time to Dream Again
I remember driving down the freeway and seeing a pickup truck with these bold words printed on the back window: “Happy to be here, proud to serve.” I’d like you to imagine those words hanging in a frequented place in your home. When you can say about your home, “Happy to be here and proud to serve,” your husband will want to hurry home every day because it’s the place he feels most valued and loved.
This book will help you create that kind of place for your man. It’s divided into thirty-one daily readings grouped into five simple sections that will help you demonstrate to your husband the love that hooked him in the first place. The titles for each section form the acrostic DREAM. After all, the marriage of your dreams doesn’t have to be a fairy tale that will never come true. You can experience the kind of marriage most people dream about by following these five guidelines:
  D = Domestic Tranquillity—Your husband needs a
peaceful haven (Days 1-5).
  R = Respect—Your husband needs to be honored in
his own home (Days 6-11).
  E = Eros—Your husband needs a fulfilling sex life
(Days 12-19).
  A = Attraction—Your husband needs to be attracted
to you (Days 20-26).
  M = Mutual Activities—Your husband needs to have
fun with you (Days 27-31).
Ask any husband if he would be happy having these five things in greater measure, and I can assure you his answer will be a resounding yes! And you just might find yourself enjoying these things too.
Notice Him, Nurture Him
It doesn’t take much time or effort to see that our culture is pessimistic about marriage. A happy marriage seems more like a fairy tale that Pollyanna dreamed up fifty years ago. Today’s wives are complaining left and right about their husbands’ many shortcomings. In fact, many women would never pick up a book like this. Why should a wife make her husband happy when he’s not making her happy? I like what host Bob Lepine of Family Life Today says, “Our role is not to figure out how to fix our spouse. Our role is: How do we reflect Christ in the marriage?”  1
And check out this insight from one husband:
When a woman is engaged to be married, she pours all her nurture into her man. She holds him, kisses him, and talks sweetly to him. They have fun together, do interesting things together, and enjoy the physical affection of first love. Then after they marry and have kids, all that nurture that went originally to the husband is suddenly transferred to the children. The kids benefit from all the maternal instincts and become the primary focus of all her tender nurture. The husband is just as needy for that nurture, but he is too proud to admit it.
When you look at your husband, you’re probably thinking he looks pretty self-sufficient. The other people in your life vying for your attention are truly needy (your children, grandchildren, aging parent, depressed friend). Look again. Your husband craves your affection and care but doesn’t want to ask for it. He bites the bullet because he’s supposed to be the strong one. Yet he desperately wants tender loving care just as you do.
How to Get the Most Out of This Book
The thirty-one happy husbands I interviewed for this book will serve as your insider guides for the next thirty-one days. Here are a few suggestions for how best to glean their insights as you read through this book:
Commit to reading a chapter every day for one month. Choose a month to soak your husband in tender loving care. Maybe choose his birthday month or your anniversary month to make it extra special and more memorable. But don’t worry—if you want to start today and his birthday isn’t for months, I’m sure he won’t mind! If you fall behind one or two days, don’t give up on the “Happy Husband” month. The chapters are short so you can easily catch up and get back on track.
Read it in five chunks. Maybe you want to tackle more than one day’s reading at a time. Once you’re settled in your comfortable chair to read, you want to keep going. Then I suggest you divide your reading into sections. Begin with Days 1-5, which cover Domestic Tranquillity. This way you can concentrate your focus on one key DREAM factor at a time. After you’ve completed the action steps suggested, you can move on to the letter R for Respect (Days 6-11), and so on.
Read the affirmation for happy wives aloud once a day. You’ll find this daily affirmation on page 179. Put your affirmation on your bathroom mirror and read it out loud every morning. Expect to feel uncomfortable doing this at first. But after a few days, not only will you believe the words you are saying, you will be living them out. It’s tempting to skip this step, so when you’re done reading today, turn to page 179. Photocopy, scan, or type out the page and put it on your bathroom mirror tonight.
Start a “Wives of Happy Husbands Discussion Group.” Read the book together with a group of friends who also want to add some sizzle to their marriages. Use the discussion guide on pages 185-192. Plan to meet weekly for five weeks to discuss what you’re learning. I promise these will be lively coffee dates or meals together!
Do the action steps. If you just read the book without trying any of the action steps, your husband probably won’t be able to tell you’re reading a book about how to love him better. At the end of each day’s reading, you’ll find these two recurring themes:
·       Notice Today —You’ll be invited to take a close look at your husband. It will take only a few moments, but it will make a big difference. When you notice something positive about your husband instead of taking him for granted or rehearsing his faults, you’ll experience a change of heart and greater warmth for your man.
·       Nurture Today —You’ll get to put your attitude into action through the daily steps to nurture him. Remember, if you don’t do anything differently this month toward your spouse, your thirty-one-day journey to marital bliss isn’t much more than wishful thinking.
Every day of your life, you’re either building your husband up or tearing him down. Proverbs 14:1 says, “The wise woman builds her house,
but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.” In the next thirty-one days, you’re going to launch a full-force, no-holding-back, life-changing building program for your marriage. Let other things slide while you make your husband the number one priority for the next thirty-one days. Your only agenda is to overwhelm him with attention and affir­mation.
Roll up your sleeves. It’s time to build and dream again.
Marriage Quiz
Do You Have a Happy Husband?
Before you begin reading Day 1, take this self-assessment to discover what areas in your marriage need the most attention. Be honest in your answers. You’re not trying to impress anyone here. Your goal is to gain valuable insight about your husband’s current level of happiness in your marriage.
The environment of my home is warm and peaceful on most days.
             Yes  No
I drop other things (even with my kids) to make time for my husband if he needs anything.
             Yes  No
I never say unkind things about my husband to others.
             Yes  No
If there’s a decision to be made, my husband has the final say.
             Yes  No
I enjoy having sex and look forward to making love to my husband.
             Yes  No
My husband and I talk regularly about ways to improve our sex life.
             Yes  No
I make an effort to look attractive with my clothes, hair, and makeup even on days when I see only my husband.
             Yes  No
I am a healthy body weight and exercise at least three times a week.
             Yes  No
My husband and I go on a date at least once a month.
             Yes  No
We still enjoy romance, kissing once a day for at least five seconds.
             Yes  No
Total the number of yes answers:
1-4: Your relationship is on shaky ground. There are some critical areas of unmet needs that you must identify both for yourself and your husband. Reading this book is perfect timing.
5-7: You have some good habits and attitudes to build on. As you make a few key changes this month, you and your husband will be laughing, flirting, and enjoying each other’s company more.
8-10: You have a happy husband. By the time you finish reading this book, he will be ecstatic. You’ll be moving from good to great (or great to unbelievable). Be on the lookout for other women to encourage and mentor