The Second Amazing Half of an Adoption Story

Christine Lindsay writes historical inspirational novels that have strong love stories, and she doesn’t shy away from difficult topics. Her debut novel SHADOWED IN SILK is set in India during a traumatic era. Christine’s long-time fascination with the British Raj was seeded from stories of her ancestors who served in the British Cavalry in India. SHADOWED IN SILK won the 2009 ACFW Genesis for Historical under the title Unveiled.


COINCIDENCE—NO WAY!!!


Is it because I’m a romantic, or are there times when God writes on our lives with a big bold pen? When quixotic occurrences take place—like Mary, the Lord’s mother—I store those moments away in my heart.


Because He’s done it again in my life. And quite frankly taken my breath away.


This past spring I didn’t think He could bless me more than He already had when He arranged for my birth-daughter to be the model on the front cover of my debut novel. My birth-daughter Sarah is the child I relinquished to adoption when she was 3 days old, and was reunited with 20 years later.


The road of adoption relinquishment and reunion is not an easy one. After the reunion as I relived the original loss of Sarah, the Lord encouraged me to write out my emotional pain. Like a lot of writers, my loss became my muse.


Years later when my publisher, WhiteFire, was looking for just the right model for the front cover of Shadowed in Silk, I noticed that Sarah had let her hair return to its natural color. It struck me that she would make a pretty good “Abby”, the main character in my book. On a whim I suggested Sarah as the model to WhiteFire. They agreed she’d be perfect. And to my added shock, Sarah agreed to be our model.


So I had fun watching my daughter wear the turquoise sari I had bought in India the previous year, being that the setting for Shadowed in Silk is India 1919.


It wasn’t until after the photo-shoot that I realized God had bracketed the conception of my fictional career and its debut with my beautiful muse. I couldn’t thank Him enough.


But He wasn’t finished yet. He was writing another chapter to our story.


During the design of my front cover, Sarah and her husband were in the midst of applying to various missions. As ER nurses, they both felt called to full-time missionary work.


Several months after my novel was released, Sarah announced they were going to serve with Global Aid Network—GAIN. One of the bigger projects they will oversee is the Ramabai Mukti Mission, an organization that has been in existence in India for over 100 years. The Mukti mission cares for women and orphans—especially the disabled and those rescued from sexual slavery.

I couldn’t believe my ears. This particular mission has strummed a chord in my heart for several decades, and so has its founder, Pandita Ramabai—a former Hindu widow who came to Christ in the early part of the last century and who started up her mission to rescue women and children.


There is an integral character in my novel Shadowed in Silk. Her name is Miriam. Some reviewers described my Miriam as a Mother Teresa figure, but in fact she is based on Ramabai who had died in 1922.


My birth-daughter, Sarah, had no way of knowing this. Only God knew.


So why India? Sarah and Mark had considered all sorts of missions all around the world. Why this particular organization in India? There are so many projects around the globe. Why bless this birth mother's heart in such a way?


As I look back on the road of adoption relinquishment and reunion—and my writing—I am amazed at the boldness of God’s pen strokes in my life.


It’s no wonder I write. I desperately scrabble to get down on paper a trace of His exquisite tenderness and kindness, the artistry of what He can do with a surrendered life . . . a surrendered child.




SHADOWED IN SILK


She was invisible to those who should have loved her.


After the Great War, Abby Fraser returns to India with her small son, where her husband is stationed with the British army. She has longed to go home to the land of glittering palaces and veiled women . . . but Nick has become a cruel stranger. It will take more than her American pluck to survive.


Major Geoff Richards, broken over the loss of so many of his men in the trenches of France, returns to his cavalry post in Amritsar. But his faith does little to help him understand the ruthlessness of his British peers toward the India people he loves. Nor does it explain how he is to protect Abby Fraser and her child from the husband who mistreats them.


Amid political unrest, inhospitable deserts, and Russian spies, tensions rise in India as the people cry for the freedom espoused by Gandhi. Caught between their own ideals and duty, Geoff and Abby stumble into sinister secrets . . . secrets that will thrust them out of the shadows and straight