Erin Healy is a firm believer
in the supernatural.
All her novels to date have
explored the juxtaposition of the
physical realm and the spiritual.
Also, the books she co-wrote
with Ted Dekker (Kiss and Burn)
flirted with the paranormal.
“Supernatural stories provide a way of
exploring these two sides of life symbolically,”
Erin Healy says, “which is something I like to do
in my novels, because our capacity to describe
or explain the spiritual side of things seems
limited.”
Unlike her secular counterparts in the
genre, Healy’s focus is entirely different. “The
secular paranormal genre is preoccupied with
darkness,” she says. “Even when good triumphs,
the attention given to evil seems designed to
titillate readers. As honestly as I can, I try to be
preoccupied with light.”
In her new novel Afloat (Thomas Nelson), a small band of
people find themselves stranded and cut off
from the world in a huge, floating house in
what was supposed to be an elite community
of architectural wonders. “It’s a supernatural disaster-survival story,” Healy says. “It’s also the
first novel I’ve written in which the men get the
lion’s share of the spotlight.
“I started Afloat with a love triangle in mind,
but in the setting—a group of people isolated
under threat—the story quickly became about
human love in broader terms. Can we love well
when our survival instincts have kicked into
high gear? Each of my characters has to grapple
with that question in a different way. The challenge
arose from the circumstances without me
forcing it—and isn’t that how life works in the
physical world, too?
“I hope this novel gives readers a renewed
conviction that for believers, death is nothing to
fear; our survival is guaranteed. How we love
each other, however, is entirely up to us.”
This article originally appeared in the April/May 2013 issue of FamilyFiction Edge digital magazine. Subscribe for free today!