My Sister Wrote a Novel at 17 and Told Me Not to Tell Anyone.

A friend found out at church a few weeks ago that my sister had written a novel. Her exact words: “You Speers are so secretive.” Then she laughed and added: “And talented.”

I laughed too — because honestly? I kind of had to agree. But also… I didn’t even know we had a novelist in the family until not that long ago myself. That’s just kind of how it goes sometimes. Talent has a way of sitting quietly in the people right next to you until one day it just shows up. Nobody makes a big announcement. Nobody sends a press release.

In this case, my mom told me. I asked Rachel about it. Her response was: “Don’t tell anyone.”

Well. June 1st, Rachel. June 1st.

The Story Behind the Christian Fiction Novel “The Miracle of His Love”

Rachel wrote The Miracle of His Love in 2022, over the course of 9 months. She was just approaching her 18th birthday, having just finished high school in Ghana — where both of us were raised — and standing at the edge of one of the biggest transitions of her life. She was about to leave everything she loved and knew to start over in America. A whole world behind her. A completely unfamiliar one ahead.

She didn’t really talk about what that felt like. She just wrote.

And then she told our mom, asked her to keep it quiet, and went back to living her life.

When I found out, I’ll be honest — I picked it up with tempered expectations. I had edited other people’s books by that point. Started one of my own — which I have yet to finish, but that’s beside the point. I knew what most first attempts at a novel tend to look like. Earnest, a little uneven. A great idea that doesn’t quite hold together yet.

So I started reading, fully prepared to be encouraging in that careful way you are when someone you love shows you their first attempt at something.

That is not what I found.

What Makes This Christian Women’s Fiction Different

What stopped me wasn’t just that Rachel could write — it was that the story actually went somewhere. The plot was coherent and complete. There was a real climax. Every character had genuine depth. The biblical truth running through it wasn’t tacked on or preachy — it was sewn into the fabric of the story itself. She had written a prodigal woman’s journey in a way that felt honest without ever feeling like a lecture.

Looking back, I think I understand why it hits the way it does. Rachel wrote that book while she was living her own version of being far from home. Her main character Katie Owens wakes up stranded in a foreign country, cut off from everything familiar, forced to face the questions she had been running from. Rachel wrote that character while standing at the edge of her own leap into the unknown — almost 18, Ghana behind her, everything uncertain ahead. Whether she meant to pour that into the story or not, it’s there. You can feel it.

That’s genuinely rare. Christian fiction that is artistic, theologically grounded, and emotionally honest — written by a teenager, in a week, while her whole world was changing. When I told Rachel we were finally publishing it, her response was: “This is unreal.”

Honestly — same, Rachel.

Why This Novel Is on SpeerLife

I could have just listed it on Amazon and called it done. Seriously would be much easier. But this book is on SpeerLife because it belongs here.

We grew up with parents who invested in our education, our faith, and our exposure to the world as a by product of missionary life. We traveled. We worked hard. We were expected to do something with what we were given. I don’t say that to make us sound extraordinary — plenty of families pour everything into their kids and those kids quietly become something because of it. That’s just what faithful investment looks like over time. It doesn’t always announce itself. It just shows up one day in a folder nobody knew existed.

Rachel’s book is one result of that investment. And publishing it through SpeerLife — a platform built around faith-driven creative work — feels like exactly the right home for it. Not just as a family moment, but as a statement about what this platform is becoming: a place where content rooted in real faith can find the audience it deserves without getting drowned out by everything else.

We’re just getting started. But this is a really good place to begin. I hope you signed up to get an email when the book is finally out.