God's Instant: A Young Adult Western Story of Rodeo, Revenge and Redemption

Can a desire for revenge lead to redemption?

Salvation doesn't always take place in church. God€s Instant is the story of how two young people overcome the crippling effects of a missing parent and how a concrete connection with the recent past and exposure to a practical, bedrock faith in God brightens their future.

Set in the rugged deserts of southeastern Washington and the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon and against the exciting world of professional rodeo, God€s Instant is the story of Jill and Grady. Jill has been hiding from the world in plain sight, and Grady is a brooding loner subject to periodic bouts of nearly homicidal rage. They€re brought together by an enigmatic old couple possessing a determined and practical faith, and who, despite their own tragic past, refuse to live completely in the present.

Synopsis

God's Instant is contemporary western novel with a Christian soul. God€s Instant is the story two young people, each trying to reconnect with an absent father, brought together by an enigmatic older couple.

Nineteen-year-old Grady is a young cowboy bouncing along from one rodeo to another, mostly because bull riding is the only skill he learned from his long-absent father. Jill is 17 and alone since nearly dying in a car crash that killed her father and left her mother an emotional invalid.

Grady is subject to bouts of nearly homicidal rage, and Jill stumbles through her day-to-day life with her face covered. After Grady severely beats another young man and after Jill changes her mind in the middle of a suicide attempt in the Columbia River, they are drawn together on a ranch owned by John and his ailing wife, Adah. With Adah's assistance, John has long ago forgiven Grady's father who was sent to prison for killing John's son. The old man feels responsible for the boy and tries to make amends by giving Grady a place to live and the opportunity to work. The old couple draws on a lifetime of hard experience to quietly nudge Grady and Jill in a spiritual direction that will allow them to reconcile their sense of loss with an uncertain future. Adah's practical faith has already rescued John and serves as an example that makes the "salvation" of both Grady and Jill possible.

FIVE STAR reviews for God€s Instant:

A memorable and beautifully written story of a young cowboy and his search for himself and his past. Blizard's descriptions of the Washington countryside range from breathtaking to unusually haunting. As I read this book, I found myself immersed in the rodeo world and what it means to be a real cowboy. The story goes beyond the typical Western, tying in the struggles of adolescence and the theme of how to figure out where you're going, if you don't know where you come from. I highly recommend God's Instant to all readers.
-Jennifer Ciotta, author and editor. Five Star Review on Goodreads.com.

Grady, the main character, is a bull rider, whose sense of the rhythm of the bull dictates his success or failure once the chute is opened. Similarly, opening these pages, the reader leans and lurches, spins, breathless, anticipating the worse while praying for the best. Like the characters herein, no reader €˜escapes€ this story unchanged, and luckily, throwing our hat to the crowd, we jog away, much better for this rich ride.
-Jim Deatherage, award winning literature teacher. Five Star Amazon Customer Review.

About the Author

Bruce Blizard is a former teacher and coach in Washington State. He lives on 25 acres with Tina, his wife of 36 years, and various dogs, cats, and horses. God€s Instant is his first book. His second A Better Place will be available this summer. Bruce loves reading and writing fiction, and is a big fan of Western and Christian themed novels.