The First Stone

A Novel

Chava is still just a girl when she makes a life-changing decision; to escape from abuse that threatens to follow her, she enters an arranged marriage with a stranger in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, Jerusalem is not far enough away. When her abuser turns up in the city, Chava is again forced to seek safety wherever she can find it—but the results are disastrous. Caught and brought before a rabbi, Chava is faced with the consequence of being stoned to death. The rabbi refuses to condemn her, but in the midst of a culture that values honor above all, Chava’s life is stained with the public disgrace of what she has done. That shame weighs down her path, but her path is also interwoven with faith, as she struggles to live with the disgrace, and maybe even find a way out.

 

Chava’s story is inspirational in its exploration of abuse and dishonor, the damage done by both, and the challenges faced by a young woman striving to cope with that damage. It gives rise to an understanding of infidelity, still relevant today, two thousand years after Chava’s story takes place. Beginning with an arranged marriage in first-century Jerusalem, her journey is about so much more—the burden of abuse and shame, and the relevance of faith amidst it all.

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Author Bio:

Kim Wiese is a preacher’s kid who landed at Abilene Christian University because that was where her friends were going. She graduated in 1978 with a Bachelor of Science in psychology, which turned out to be useless until she started writing and eventually published several books, one of which received the WILLA Award in 2010. Her time spent at college was not a total waste—that is where she met her long-suffering husband, Bob; the two of them travel with Joshua Nations, and are board members for Christian Ministries in Africa. Now, in north central Texas, she can still be found pecking away on her laptop, whacking little white balls toward little round holes, playing Champion of the Couch with her granddudes, and fussing over her unnecessarily large and sensitive dog.

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Endorsements:

“This book makes the experience of infidelity take on a new light. Five years ago Kim Wiese shared a scene she had written about the woman caught in adultery. I was mesmerized. No longer could I read that story from a detached perspective; the people  were now real and generated a myriad of emotions. As a specialist in the treatment of infidelity, I encouraged her to write this book. It facilitates compassion and understanding, not only for the woman in the story, but for others impacted by infidelity in [our] current time.”

-Rick Reynolds

President and Founder of AffairRecovery.com