Charity’s Garden

A novel of trauma, surrender, and soul-deep healing

Charity McBride was trained to save lives. As a paramedic, she’s witnessed horror and heartbreak—and tucked her own pain into the pockets of her uniform, where no one would see. But when a false accusation shatters her career and sends her spiraling into homelessness, Charity finds herself without the very things she used to protect: safety, direction, and hope.

With nowhere to go but inward, Charity seeks refuge in a forgotten garden on the outskirts of town—a quiet place tended by a mysterious old man and inhabited by fragments of her own soul. Here, amid flowers that bloom through hardship and weeds that choke with lies, she meets Joshua—a blue-eyed stranger whose presence disarms her defenses and speaks to her brokenness with unnerving clarity.

But not every voice in the garden wants her whole. Shadowy spirits lurk at the edges, whispering words of despair. Zolgreth, a demon from her past, feeds on her guilt and failure. As Charity battles for her sanity, she must decide which voice to believe: the one that calls her unworthy… or the one that never stopped calling her home.

Charity’s Garden is a visceral, spiritually charged journey into the fractured landscape of the soul. With poetic prose and piercing insight, this unforgettable prequel to The Gates of Shiloh dares to confront the question at the heart of every survivor’s story: Can a soul broken by this world ever truly be made whole?