God’s Prescription for the Tears of Life
Linda Windsor is an award-winning author of twenty-five historical and five contemporary novels, as wells as three novellas. A native of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the former professional singer, musician, and ABA writer gave up her secular music and writing over to God with initial protest but without regret.
Her success in Christian fiction was marked by many awards, including the coveted Christian Booksellers Association’s Christy. But in 2004, Linda lost her husband at Christmas. With God’s grace and a full house at the time, she managed to carry on writing romance, despite raw grief, with the support of her mother, son and daughter. Now her daughter has married and moved out. Her son married, but he and his wife stayed. He’d promised his dad that he’d take care of mom and has been faithful to that end.
In 2013, Windsor gave up her writing to care for her mother, who had Parkinson’s Disease. A little over a year later, the two story sprawling eighteenth century home that she and her husband had restored, where they’d raised their children, no longer met the family needs. Leaving what she lovingly called their historical nut house, her family moved into a new home with first floor bedrooms and private quarters for her son and his wife upstairs.
Also left behind was Windsor’s part time job as a corporate comptroller in the family business of electric motor sales and service. Yes, she has worked out in the repair shop on motors—grease and all—as well as on a computer in the office! After all, she grew up in the business her parents started in an old barn shared with race horses some 67 years ago. She can’t say her degree in elementary education has exactly furthered either of her careers, unless one counts stimulating her love of books and history. But writing is her love, followed by music. Linda sang and played guitar and keyboard in a country/old rock and roll band in the 80’s with her late husband. They had a wonderful life together as heartmates, soulmates and song-mates.
Linda continued without her music-mate, doing special music and playing the organ in her church. Then, in 2015, a call to play and sing for a Christmas party led Linda back to performing, this time gratis, at senior centers and events. She recalls one of the funniest moments was when one of her fans hobbled to the stage with her walker and told her that she’d never seen anyone as old as Linda and her lead guitarist play rock and roll. After COVID, she cut back hauling heavy equipment and now jams with her two year old grand-niece, who wields a mean spoon and tin pan.
But COVID drew Linda into research and kindled the idea for the book of her heart. She is currently writing this novel, set in first century Alexandria, Jerusalem, and what is today, north Wales. It is a first for the author. Not a romance, it’s based on the many traditions, church writings, and histories of several countries covering the escape from Jerusalem after Jesus’s resurrection and Pentecost of Anna of Arimathea and her father Joseph. She’s praying it will become her twenty-sixth historical novel. God willing.