I didn’t retreat to a mountain cabin nor have an aunt whose journals helped me discover truths I needed to know, nor did I withdraw from God during the depths of my grief as Allison does. While my characters are never me - I allow them to be individuals and allow their lives to unfold in their own way - there are always pieces of me in them. Q: How much of your main character’s situation is based on your own and will readers see a portrait of the author in your heroine? His response was, “If my story can help someone else, use it.” In order to honor my husband, I made certain from the very beginning that he was on-board for me to write about and talk about our marriage - which would mean talking about him and his battles with addiction. Q: How does your husband feel about you using aspects of your lives in a novel and speaking openly about it in interviews? God used the divorce to save our marriage! One of those unexpected ways was realized when my husband and I were remarried more than five years later. Therefore, I must have misunderstood.īut God had many things to teach me in the following years, including that He answers prayers in totally unexpected ways and in His own time, not mine. I had believed His promise through many difficult times, but it hadn’t come to pass.

I was devastated because I’d been so convinced God had promised me He would save our marriage.

Like Allison, my marriage ended in divorce because of my husband’s alcoholism. Now she is moving from Boise to Kings Meadow to start life afresh and find a way to heal from her heartbreak. She was so certain God had promised to save her marriage, but obviously she was wrong. Her marriage of more than twenty years has ended in divorce because of her husband’s alcoholism. Q: Can you tell us a little bit about A Promise Kept and specifically how your own life inspired this story?Ī Promise Kept opens as Allison Kavanagh arrives at the house her aunt Emma bequeathed to her - a log home in the mountains. In A Promise Kept (Thomas Nelson/January 7, 2014/ISBN: 978-1401687656/$15.99) Hatcher draws on that personal pain to craft a story about a woman married to an alcoholic, a woman who has to learn the value and importance of surrendering everything to the Lord. In the following years, God used the pain of what appeared to be a failed marriage to draw her closer to Him.

“I’d been so convinced God had promised me that He would save our marriage,” the author says, but she quickly learned that sometimes God answers prayer in the most unexpected ways. When Robin Lee Hatcher’s marriage ended in divorce, she was devastated.

Who I Am with You by Robin Lee Hatcher