Trust the Wings

Author Barbara Schultze’s debut novel is remarkably authentic, peppered with surprises, and interspersed with subtle biblical signposts.

It gently portrays how personal adversity, often initially negatively perceived and received, might just be an individual’s pathway to spiritual and emotional growth.

In notes, Schultze explains that her book is the culmination of decades of her work experience. She writes, “I acknowledge my indebtedness to the hundreds of home care and hospice clients and families who allowed me into their homes over twenty-five years as a home care nurse and seven years as a hospice chaplain. You shared your lives with me. Some of your stories were difficult to tell and heartbreaking to hear. In combining, embellishing, and fictionalizing some of them, I pray I have honored the spirit of all of you.”

As the year 1999 draws to a close, 28-year-old Aviana Lehrer is convinced that in the next century her nursing career will achieve new heights. But a devastating betrayal and the shocking discovery that her aging father has been arrested set Aviana on a path she’d rather not pursue. When she finds herself back at her father’s house, which she escaped from 10 years before, the extent of his deterioration forces Aviana back into her old role of responsible and dutiful child.

As her career trajectory plummets and her need for income presses in, Aviana decides to live with her father—even though his hatred toward her is palpable—and become a home care nurse so she will have the flexibility to look in on her father during the day.

As Aviana encounters people and scenes far out of her comfort zone, she finds herself confronting her judgmentalism and being drawn into people’s pain and small victories. Though Aviana had always kept her patients’ non-medical needs at arm’s length, she is changed and begins to care—and share of herself—in ways she never thought possible.

Though Aviana struggles to feel like she belongs anywhere, even in her relationship with God—she wonders, “Does he exist?”—she eventually helps to shape and contribute to an entirely different family than she could have imagined, a community of “disparate lives.” Finally, she realizes that “she did belong—right where she was, from one day to the next. Not in striving for prestige and respect in the corporate world, like some proud, fierce eagle, but in opening her wings to love and support her growing flock—and to receive their love in return.” (Edenridge Press)