The Way Back Is Forward (The Shaken and the Still)

By Rev Gregory C Smith PhD

After a devastating fall from public grace, Marianne Hightower disappears. Once a beloved speaker and spiritual leader, her life implodes when her teenage son is arrested for a DUI hit-and-run--and the church she helped build quietly distances itself. In the absence that follows, Marianne loses not just her career, but her voice, her faith in institutions, and her sense of self. Years later, working quietly as a hospice nurse, Marianne is called to the bedside of Paul Brannon--the very pastor whose whispered innuendo helped end her career. In his final weeks, Paul is no longer a pulpit figure, but a man undone. Their silent reckoning becomes the beginning of something unexpected: a slow, painful, redemptive return to truth. As Marianne steps deeper into a life of radical honesty, forgiveness, and presence, she begins to reconnect with her estranged son Caleb, revisit abandoned trails, and write again--not to be heard, but to be whole. From small grief support groups to quiet library readings, her journey unfolds not in grand gestures, but in quiet, sacred moments of becoming. The Way Back Is Forward is a tender, layered novel about what remains when the titles are gone, what love looks like after the fracture, and how healing isn't a return to what was--but the steady, brave movement into what still can be.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0F671RYQ5
• ISBN13: 9798281182294
• Release Date: April 2025
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 529 Pages
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.2" x 6.0"