Lisa Takeuchi Cullen was a longtime staff writer for TIME magazine. She now develops TV pilots for production companies and recently sold her first pilot for "The Ordained" to CBS. Born in Japan, Cullen lives in New Jersey with family.
You can learn more about Cullen and her work at her website: www.lisacullen.com. You also might consider connecting with Cullen via her Facebook author page and on Twitter.
Cullen’s debut novel Pastors’ Wives follows three women whose lives converge and intertwine at a Southern evangelical megachurch. Ruthie follows her Wall Street husband from New York to Magnolia, a fictional suburb of Atlanta, when he hears a calling to serve at a megachurch called Greenleaf. Reeling from the death of her mother, Ruthie suffers a crisis of faith—in God, in her marriage, and in herself. Candace is Greenleaf’s “First Lady,” a force of nature who’ll stop at nothing to protect her church and her superstar husband. Ginger, married to Candace’s son, struggles to play dutiful wife and mother while burying her calamitous past. All their roads collide in one chaotic event that exposes their true selves. Inspired by Cullen’s reporting as a staff writer for Time magazine, Pastors’ Wives is a dramatic portrayal of the private lives of pastors’ wives, caught between the demands of faith, marriage, duty, and love.
*This book is published by Plume and inprint of Penguin.
My Thoughts About The Book:
Having been a pastor's wife for 21 years now, I was immediately drawn to the title of Lisa's book. I also understood going in that the book was not necessarily published under the genre of "Christian Fiction" and Christian fiction it is not. It is a novel (fiction) with Christian/religious themes. Having said that, I was still a little taken back with some of the language and one (what I would consider) pornographic portion of the book.
However, I would have to say that the book is very well written. Cullen's characters are well developed and very shortly into the book you feel like you know these women. I like how Cullen shared the story from all three women's perspective. She rotates the story from chapter to chapter from each vantage point, but the story flows well. I also thought she did an exceptional job of filling the reader in on the backstory of each woman and did so fluently.
My favorite Pastor's Wife in the book was Ginger. I immediately was able to relate to her on several levels. Cullen did a really good job of painting a clear picture of the gospel showing the power of God's transforming grace through Ginger's story. Anyone who reads this book will get a vivid and true-to-life picture of the struggle many face, pastor's wife or not, in finding grace and learning to lean on and trust in God. Whether the picture of the inner workings of a megachurch that Cullen presents in her book are realistic or not, I wouldn't know. However, if Ms Cullen is still working out her own faith (and I could sometimes almost feel what I guessed to be the authors' personal religious tension in her writing), I certainly hope and pray she finds a Bible believing and gospel infused body of believers to walk out her journey of faith with.
Go HERE and see what others are saying about the book.
And don't miss the fun giveaway and Facebook party Lisa Cullen and Litfuse Publicity are hosting:
Enter Today - 5/2 - 5/23!
*Thank you Litfuse Publicity for providing a complimentary copy of the book for the purpose of review! Happy Reading,Jennifer 
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