The novels NOT ON MY SKIN, THE CHOIRMASTER, and SINS OF OUR HEARTS are available in Amazon Kindle Books. Check it out! http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-R.-Alila/e/B002QD5TDM
Category Archives: Christian Romance
THE CHOIRMASTER (A Novel)
If you are a young man looking for a woman to marry, don’t be like rubbery Michael the choirmaster; if you are a married young woman don’t be like Eva, the woman who decided to sit out all of her husband’s evangelistic activities; if you are a single woman and another woman beat you to a man’s heart, forget it and move on, don’t be like that girl who wrecked a fellow church member’s marriage; if you are a man, don’t be like Saul the soul-killer, and definitely don’t be like his wife–the woman whose cellphone never stopping buzzing the events in her neighbors’ lives; if you are a minister, stop kidding, there are certain weddings you can refuse to bless! If you are a church elder, you are the “deacon” of the faithful: your word is gold, don’t waste it!
The novel THE CHOIRMASTER is not about music, it is about life, read it and live well. http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-R.-Alila/e/B002QD5TDM
The Choirmaster (a spiritual tragedy)
In Mud Valley Church, the evangelizing wonders of the Church Choir have become both a blessing and a minor headache. The growth in card-carrying membership and church attendance explode overnight. That is the blessing. The headache is the charismatic but unassuming Choirmaster Michael whose artistic gifts are key to the phenomenal church growth. However, as the women with available daughters fight to outdo one another in monthly dinners for the choirmaster, things become a little worldly. But even after Pastor David seals the marriage between Michael and one Eva Joseph with the urgency of Samuel the prophet, Choirmaster Michael’s outreach ministry becomes a bother to the Church Board, when the Treasurer reveals that the Choir is funding most of Mud Valley Church’s budgetary needs. The Choirmaster has grown bigger than life, and the Church Board is left wondering, “What would happen should the choirmaster leave?”
When Choirmaster Michael’s marriage to Eva would hit rock bottom because one Jane Caleb would not let him be, Pastor David discovers that Mud Valley’s spiritual and moral problems are more organic and deeply ingrained than the perceived threat from choirmaster Michael. Young Pastor David faces a historical moral issue, and he must decide whether to confront Mud Valley’s historical demons or seek a transfer to clearer spiritual waters.
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The Chiomaster
In Mud Valley Church, the evangelizing wonders of the Church Choir have become both a blessing and a minor headache, as the growth in card-carrying membership and church attendance explode overnight. That is the blessing. The headache is the charismatic but unassuming Choimaster whose gifts are key to the phenomenal growth. As the women-folk with available daughters fight to outdo one another in monthly dinners for the Choimaster, things become a little earthly and scarery. But even after Michael is finally crowned with the urgency of Samuel the prophet, his outreach ministry becomes a bother to the Church Board, whose membership are left wondering, “What if the Choimaster leaves?” when the Treasurer reveals that the Choir is funding most of Mud Valley Church’s Budget.
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Readers and Fans
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JR Alila
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ARE WE A LITERATE GENERATION?
I publish from abroad on great Kenyan political and cultural themes. My Novels have been rated by aliens as “Literary,” (Not on My Skin; Sins of Our Hearts) ”For the times” (The Luo Dreamers Odyssey); “Messianic” (The Wise One of Ramogiland); “A novel for a woman’s heart ” (Whisper to My Aching Heart), and the list of comments continues. But I wonder if we are still a reading generation, with library cards. Yet back home in East Africa, literary critics decrying of a literary drought, meaning that nobody writes a novel that begs you to think; a novel that goes beyond the emotion and demands that the reader reads between the lines. I am not exactly young, having been born in the mid 1950s, but my point of view was not tainted by colonial strings. All I remember as a little boy of six was my mother playing activist for either KANU or KADU; all I remember growing up was the order of the sixties descending into the strife of the late sixties and early seventies, as Kenyan leaders turned their guns of hate onto other Kenyans. Yet it was a Kenya where you applied for a post and received a response in the mail, it was a Kenya in which you went to a school you chose, your grades allowing. All that was until the so-called “district focus.” My writings are shaped by personal experiences in the 1960s to the19190s. But as a traveled man, some of my novels such as NOT OF MY SKIN, THE CHOIR MASTER, SINS OF OUR HEARTS, THE LUO DREAMERS ODYSSEY: FROM THE SUDAN TO AMERICAN POWER and THE AMERICAN POLYGAMIST borrow from my diaspora experience (17 years is a long time on the road!).
But even as I write, I doubt if we as Kenyans, Africans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and Diaspora Africans still read. How many of us can sustain a debate without being abusive? Very few. How many of us can talk sense to a woman or man? Not many. The art of dialogue and verbal persuasion is dead in us. Don’t tell me that “But I managed to round up a man or woman up with whom I share the house.” That is the point: you don’t want to call her ”my wife” or him “my husband.” The reason he or she has not walked with you to some man or woman of God to tie the vows is because you lack the verbal abilities of generations before, that priorities have changed for women and men since ten years ago, just made your verbal task and marriage chances the more difficult.
Read relevantly to empower yourself as a human being who can think, talk and act. Read.
Get Novels by JR Alila here:
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THE CHOIRMASTER (A Spiritual Tragedy)
A Novel By Joseph R Alila
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2
A Raging Heart
Eva drove home in a dreamy state of mind. The man she had left in the hostel had remained with part of her heart. She felt in love. She had been in love before, but this one was special. She had felt secure in the presence of the stranger. If Michael had asked, “Can I marry you?” she could have responded, “Yes,” without a thought.
“Mama! Mama! I think I met my future husband!” she cried as she made her way to the kitchen where her mother was laying out the table for dinner.
“Eva?”
“Yes, Mama! I met my future husband.”
“You are not a teenager. You know the ways of all men!” Deborah warned.
“Mama, this one is special.”
“Eva, my dear, how many reliable men have you met in Mud Valley?”
“Mama, his name is Michael. He is from Tanners Valley.”
“You must have mistaken rural subservience for love, my dear. I never met a man from Tanners Valley who could hold a knife and a fork the right way. Be careful about what you are running into. Tanners Valley is a leather-tanning town. Do you know what it means to live near a tannery? It snuffs all sense of civilized behavior from a person’s head.”
“Ma!” Eva cried in anguished alarm. She realized that her mother had become what she, Eva, never imagined; her mother was a proud bigot. Her Michael did not fit the image of the dumb rural breed from a stinking leather-tanning town Deborah was trying to paint.
“Eva?”
“I am talking about the new choirmaster at Mud Valley High School. He is a Christian, I love him, and he happens to be from Tanners Valley.”
“He sounds to be a material for the choirmaster of the Youth Choir.”
“Mama, you are not being helpful. I’ll be taking him to church tomorrow. Second, I’ll bring him home to dinner tomorrow evening.”
“Eva, take that man to church tomorrow and you will have lost him. If I were you, I could have dug in my heels and hooked the fish first, before exposing him to Jane Caleb and the Jacob Twins,” Deborah said. She was talking in reference to three prominent spinsters in Mud Valley Church, who, like her Eva, were on the hunt for suitors.
“Ma, he is hooked as of now. The best you can do is to pray for us.”
“Your Michael is hooked in one day, Eva?”
“I read somewhere that if you don’t hook a fish on the first try, you won’t catch it.”
“In which pond is this fish resting tonight?”
“At the church’s Youth Hostel.”
“Eva, believe me, you lost the fish already.”
“How, Ma?”
“If Ezekiel, your supervisor at the hostel, mentions to Monica that there is a new music master headed for Mud Valley Church, Mrs. Risper Caleb would be printing dinner invitation cards for tomorrow evening.”
“Ma, I have a head start on Michael. We will be in church tomorrow. The two of us will do a duet, and I won’t move an inch from him the whole time. I’ll bring him home tomorrow evening. Never mind, I’ll do the cooking.”
“What bit you, Eva?”
“The world, Mama. Since losing Doug to that loser whose name I can’t pronounce, I learnt my lessons. This one is a heart I must protect.”
The following morning, Eva took Michael to church. Nobody appeared to have noticed him until Elder Ezekiel, who was leading the services, asked, “Do we have any first-time guests?”
Michael was among the three guests in church on that Sabbath. There was a husband-wife pair from a distant province too. Elder Ezekiel introduced the couple first. The woman explained that they were retirees born in Mud Valley and were thinking of returning to their roots.
Elder Ezekiel introduced Michael as the new music teacher at Mud Valley High School, and that he came from family of lay evangelists. “Michael, stand up so that your sisters in Christ can see you.”
Michael stood up, then Eva stood next to him saying, “Michael and I will do a duet from the Hymnal.”
They walked up to the front and sang Just As I Am. Michael’s baritone was adorable. They sang so well that by the last stanza, the whole congregation stood up to sing with them. Then they were greeted with Amens.
At the end of the Sabbath, the Choir Director was enlisting Michael for a role in training the church choir.
“Caleb, you must invite Michael for dinner soonest possible,” Mrs. Risper Caleb said, entering the Treasury, where Caleb was tallying the day’s collections.
“Why the hurry, Honey?” Elder Caleb asked, yet he understood why Risper was in a hurry to invite the new school choirmaster home. He understood that Eva’s manipulation of the situation to her advantage had raised the ire of Risper, his wife, who had been working too hard to get Jane, their only daughter, a suitable husband.
“You ask ‘Why the hurry,’ Dear? Are you blind? Didn’t you see what the Joseph daughter just did?”
“I see. Can we discuss this later at home?”
“Mama, Dad, I am on my way home,” Jane announced, opening the door.
“Have you greeted Michael already?”
“Ma, please, I’m not cheap!”
“Jenny!” Caleb whispered in suppressed anger, remembering that he was sitting next to the Sanctuary.
“I am sorry, Dad. If Michael has brains, he must be reading the tea leaves already.”
“If Michael has brains? What a choice of words, Jane. Of course he has brains. No one gets a Master’s degree in Music unless they have a lot of brains,” Risper offered an informed assessment of Michael.
Thanks to the impression Michael made on Elder Ezekiel, the latter talked about him during dinner with Saul, his son. Monica, Ezekiel’s daughter-in-law, had listened as he heaped praise on Michael’s professional, personal and ancestral pedigrees. Even though it was late in the evening, Monica’s rumor mill began to churn in earnest.
“Mrs. Caleb, Happy Sabbath,” Monica said. She had called Risper to raise an alert about Michael.
“Monica, Happy Sabbath. You sound excited.”
“There is a special young man in town, in whom Jane should be interested.”
“What kind of man is he that he should make you that excited?”
“He is single, a Christian, and well cultured in our faith. He has a degree in music.”
“What makes a man with a degree in music special, Monica?”
“How do you expect a woman to answer such a question? But he is the new music teacher at Mud Valley High School.”
“Goodnight, Monica.”
Risper had not admitted it, but her heart too was racing. She was anxious to host the new high school choirmaster even before meeting him.
“Who is that Risper?” Elder Caleb asked.
“She is Monica, dear.”
“Anything amiss?”
“No. She is reporting that there is the new choirmaster at the high school who is a member of our faith.”
“The music teacher must be a man.”
“He is a single man, dear,” Risper clarified.
“So what is the excitement about?”
“Caleb, have you stopped praying for luck to come Jane’s way?”
“I do, dear.”
“Thank you. We have to have him over for dinner, soonest possible. I don’t want to risk him associating with wrong characters before Jane interviews him.”
“I get the idea, dear,” Caleb concurred, afraid to contradict Risper on any matter about Jane.
Monica called Mrs. Rhoda Jacob next. Monica spoke for a minute, before Rhoda said “Thank you,” and hang up the phone.
“What is that Rodi?” Mr. Jacob asked from his side of the king-size bed. He was reading a passage from a Men’s Daily Devotional. The topic was “Parental Responsibility.” The example was Abram’s effort to get his son Isaac a good wife, while he, Abram, was old and far removed from his nativity (Genesis 24).
“It is Monica, dear.”
“Why do you still listen to that woman whose tongue could one day destroy our church?”
“Dear, what is the judgment for on Sabbath Eve?”
“I am sorry, but that is not the woman I want to talk to on any Sabbath eve.”
“You are still judging, dear.”
“Okay, what is she talking about?”
“There is an impressionable young man, in whom the twins could be interested.”
“Impressionable young man? He sounds cheap. Why should Mara look at him?” asked Mr. Jacob.
“Dear, wealth cannot buy a good heart,” Rhoda chastised her husband.
“I am sorry, Rodi.”
“Can we suspend this discussion about a hypothetical man we have not seen?”
“Let’s pray, Rodi,” Jacob said.
So on day one, hardly six hours since Michael’s arrival in Mud Valley, the struggle for his heart had started in earnest. He had not seen the classroom where he would teach fifth-graders music, yet his name was on the tongue of every significant family in Mud Valley. The mention of his name was causing nightmares to mothers of daughters he had not met.
At the end of day two, Michael’s melodious voice constantly rang in every spinster’s ears, and one woman named Eva was provoking the ire of other spinsters, who were grumbling, cursing, and calling for fair play.
As the head of the Youth Movement, or rather, exploiting her position as the Director of Youth, Eva took charge of Michael, who was twenty-four years old and wasn’t exactly a youth, though he found more comfort among the youth. At the end of the Sabbath, she introduced Michael to Pastor David, who had broken the spiritual bread, and Mrs. Kay David. Eva referred to Michael as “a dear friend” and “a future director of the Youth Choir,” even though the position was not open then.
Following a path of least resistance, Eva shepherded Michael out of the church. By the time Mrs. Caleb came out of her husband’s office, Michael had gone.
Eva drove Michael to her mother’s house, where she cooked dinner for him before taking him back to the hostel, late in the night.
So far Eva was a step ahead of the other spinsters. But time would tell as to how long she would maintain her advantage. So far she was happy to be the hand that made sure that the single man ate properly. Eva promised in her heart to keep him engaged, help him settle down, and make sure he was supplied adequately with essentials.
In addition, Eva made sure that Michael was in church from where she could monitor the activities of rival forces around him. She would continue to be close enough to him, not only to keep the gossip going, but also to make others really uncomfortable. But she promised that she would not be the one to propose to him.
That had been Eva’s resolve, eleven years back, before other characters joined her to create the story ahead; that was Eva before Michael was a music superstar; that was Eva before Michael became her husband; that was Eva before the world played its dirty hand against her; that was Eva before she met and knew a snake known as Saul; that was Eva before Elder Ezekiel overplayed his hand and revealed his sordid past.
THE CHOIRMASTER
In JR Alila’s “THE CHOIRMASTER” (13 ISBN: 9781449541996) in Mud Valley Church, the evangelizing wonders of Michael the Choirmaster become a blessing and a headache. Church membership and attendance explode overnight but at a spiritual/moral cost. Significant mothers of spinsters are engaged in bare-knuckles pitching for their daughters at elaborate dinners tables for Michael. Even Michael’s marriage to Eva fails to douse one Jane’s passion.
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JR Alila’s Novels
Which of JR Alila’s novels are you reading this fall? There are issues out there to meet any of your needs: from spirituality to politics to culture.
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