At the age of 32, Leslie discovered her husband of almost ten years was having an affair. Here is her journey through love and loss, joy and sorrow, pain and laughter, and, most importantly, God’s faithfulness and amazing grace.
Announcing “The Christian Girl’s Guide to Divorce” by Leslie Spencer
May 21, 2012 by Jordan Green
Some months ago, my friend Carlos sent me the following Facebook message:
Hey, I know I’m not your slush-pile reader, and that recommending a book to you is not my job. Still, I couldn’t help but think — actually, over the past couple of MONTHS I’ve been thinking about showing this blog to you — that you’ll find it’s great book material. Start from the beginning, and it will read something like it’s supposed to.
Carlos is one of the best writers I know, and I know he doesn’t suffer poor writing, so I clicked through to The Christian Girl’s Guide to Divorce.
It didn’t even take a full entry for me to be hooked on Leslie Spencer’s story. I forwarded a link to a few other folks I trust, and they were hooked, too. Her posts were funny, and Leslie’s writing had the pace and poise of a natural storyteller. She was also exploring a topic and experience that is both highly common and widely ignored within Christian culture, and she was exploring that topic with searing honesty. Within 20 minutes, I sent an email to Leslie asking if we could talk about a book. Within 12 hours of Carlos’ message, we sent her a contract.
As I said, that was some months ago. Leslie was new to publishing, and I told her she should follow due diligence. On one hand, we wanted her to feel comfortable signing a deal with us. On the other, we didn’t want other publishers to find out how great her blog was. At least not yet.
A few weeks ago, Leslie Spencer officially became our fourth signing. You can read much of her story over at her blog, and we think you’ll find it just as compelling as we do. Obviously, a good portion of her story is posted there for free, and we debated how to approach the transition from blog to book. In the end, we’ve decided to keep the blog (mostly) as-is. There’s plenty more story to be told, and The Christian Girl’s Guide to Divorce (the book version, I mean) will do just that.
We’ll be posting more about Leslie in the coming weeks. For now, we’ll breathe a sigh of relief that she’s finally on board.