Schaub, Christine

PERSONAL:

Education: Anderson University, B.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Nashville, TN. E-mail—findingannanovel@aol.com.

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, journalist, corporate writer, screenwriter, actor, public speaker, educator, and pianist. Freelance corporate communications writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

"On the Page" screenwriting contest winner, Screenwriting Expo 2; recipient of national and regional awards in writing and design.

WRITINGS:

Finding Anna, Bethany House (Minneapolis, MN), 2005.

The Longing Season, Bethany House (Minneapolis, MN), 2006.

Author of column for Method Web site.

SIDELIGHTS:

Christine Schaub is a journalist, screenwriter, and corporate communications expert who has worked for a variety of pharmaceutical, health care, and entertainment companies. As a novelist, she concentrates her efforts in the field of historical fiction. Her books combine significant biographical and historical facts with a fictional approach to storytelling to recount the origins of well-known hymns and the background of the people who wrote them. "I'm a storyteller at heart, whether composing feature stories for print media or corporate communications or the stage," Schaub told J.M. Mochstetler in a Favorite PASTimes interview. "But writing, unlike acting, allows a mass audience to put on their own mental stage plays based on the details I give them."

In Finding Anna, Horatio Gates Spafford was a Chicago lawyer in 1871 when he experienced firsthand the devastation of the great Chicago fire. Though his business was destroyed in the gigantic blaze, his home and family were spared. As the story progresses, Horatio and his wife, Anna, dedicate themselves to helping rebuild the ravaged city. However, Anna's attempts to aid others drain her strength. Though his wife needs his assistance, Horatio concentrates so intently on his philanthropic missions that he fails to see that the one most needful of his help is right at home. Soon, however, Horatio recognizes that he is ignoring his spiritual duties as well as the gift of family that God has provided him. The Spaffords decide to travel to England as part of D.L. Moody's evangelical ministry, and during this sojourn the family reconnects, Horatio builds a newly strengthened relationship with Anna, and he writes the famous hymn "It Is Well with My Soul," even while enduring the trauma of another devastating tragedy. "As the reader closes the book they will be amazed that there really is a ‘happily every after’ ending, even in tragedy. Its source … is the faith in the redemptive power of Christ," commented Armchair Interviews reviewer Jackie Baumgarten.

With The Longing Season, Schaub explores the history of one of the world's best-known and most venerable of hymns, "Amazing Grace." The story centers on John Newton, the reprehensible sailor and slave trader in the 1740s. His childhood friend, Mary Catlett, was an intelligent and progressive woman who often waited faithfully for him to return from his voyages. Though Newton, an unpleasant person, spent much of his life engaged in the pursuit of pleasure, the experience of being caught in a violent storm led him to make a dramatic and heartfelt conversion to Christianity. Nearly twenty-five years later, Newton reflected on his life experiences—both good and evil—and penned the profound words of "Amazing Grace." "The Longing Season is both a redemption story and an exquisitely told love story," remarked Ruth Anderson on the Middle Tennessee Christian Writers Web log. "Schaub paints a powerful portrait of the events and choices that brought Newton to the point that he could write the words to ‘Amazing Grace’ and know with every fiber of his being that those words represented the truth of his life," Anderson continued.

A Book Diva's Reviews critic named the novel "a story of humanity and the willingness to change, love and yearning, goodness and redemption, in the face of adversity." Kate E. Schmelzer, writing in Campus Life's Ignite Your Faith, called The Longing Season a story of "human love" as well as a reaffirmation of the ability of God to "save and redeem those who appear to be the most lost."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Campus Life's Ignite Your Faith, March-April, 2007, Kate E. Schmelzer, review of The Longing Season, p. 27.

ONLINE

Armchair Interviews,http://www.armchairinterviews.com/ (August 1, 2007), Jackie Baumgarten, review of Finding Anna.

Best Reviews,http://www.thebestreviews.com/ (August 30, 2005), Harriet Klausner, review of Finding Anna.

Book Diva's Reviews,http://www.bookdiva.net/ (July 23, 2006), review of The Longing Season.

Christine Schaub Web log,http://www.christineschaub.typepad.com (August 1, 2007).

Eveslegacy Web log,http://eveslegacy.blogspot.com/ (July 22, 2006), Karen Eve, review of The Longing Season.

Favorite PASTimes Web log,http://favoritepastimes.blogspot.com/ (August 22, 2006), J.M. Hochstetler, interview with Christine Schaub.

Middle Tennessee Christian Writers Web log,http://mtcw.wordpress.com/ (March 16, 2007), Ruth Anderson, review of The Longing Season.