She loves a happy ending

By Don Rush

At a young 70-plus years, Addison Township resident Catherine Ulrich Brakefield is enjoying her youth by promoting her newest and ninth book, Love’s Final Sunrise.

“I never thought I’d be a writer,” she said. “I always loved being outside. Then I started writing for the church paper, writing manuals and then starting writing editorials for the LA View.”

But, a writer she is – an award-winner author at that. She’s been writing faith-based historical romances novels (including a four-book “Destiny” series) since 2006 and completed two history books about Lapeer County. When asked why she started writing she quickly answered, “I wanted happy endings. In true life, as you know, there’s not always a happy ending. I want happy endings in all my books,” she said.

She said she has always loved history and is unabashedly Christian. “I was so lucky. I became born again. I was always a Catholic. But one day I was listening to Billy Graham. He was talking about ‘do you have a personal relationship with Christ’ and I thought, ‘well I do all the Sacraments, so what the heck, why not do this, too.’ So, I knelt down in front of my TV set and accepted Jesus Christ into my heart thinking nothing was going to change, but wow! You cannot believe the change. I wanted to read the Bible more, I became a Bible school teacher. I did everything and then I wanted to write.”

She said she went to Christian magazine writing school, but to enroll she had to enter a poem. She did, she attended the courses and she started writing.

Her love of storytelling came from her grandmother, who lived with her family for 12 years. “My daughter was two months old at the time we took her (grandmother) in. We thought she’d be with us for just a year. She gave me more than I ever gave her. She gave me my Destiny’s series. It’s amazing how the Lord works in your life. She had the gift of gab, she could tell us a story and she would say so much we could see the gypsies walking down the dirt roads. You could visualize the small pox. You could see it all in your mind with her words. I even interviewed her, recorded her voice and didn’t do anything with that until she passed. I don’t know why, but about a year later I listened to her and her stories are now a part of the Destiny’s series.”

Brakefield is also a lover of history and the setting for most of her books are set in the past. She enjoys the history and she enjoys researching history. Her latest book, however, is not set in the past. “It’s totally different from my other books. Love’s Final Sunrise is a futuristic, suspense novel set in Amish country after an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) attack,” she said.

Here’s what the press release states about Love’s Final Sunrise:

“New Yorker Ruth Jessup and Amish-bred Joshua Stutzman live in different worlds. But their lives collide in catastrophic proportions as they battle wits against a psychopath and the New World Order. After Ruth wakes from one of her recurring nightmares, she prepares for the day’s fox hunt, rides down a lonely stretch of road in Owenson, Michigan, and is suddenly immersed in her nightmare.

“Fleeing for her life and suffering from amnesia, she finds herself in an hourglass of yesteryear. No televisions, radios, cell phones, or computers, only buggies and lanterns, planting and canning. If not for Joshua, Ruth would be lost and homeless. An attraction blossoms, but the chaos of the biblical seven-year tribulation blankets the world. Can Joshua’s Amish ways help them survive the next three-and-a half years? And without the mark of the beast, will they escape the executioner’s axe?”

According to Brakefield’s husband of 50 years, Addison Township trustee Ed, to research this novel his wife studied with the Amish. “They taught her how to cook, how to milk a cow and how to drive a buggy,” he said.

In the back of the book are Amish home remedies, common sense know-how tips and recipes.

“It has a little bit of everything in it,” she said.

The book has been on sale on Amazon since Nov. 16.

Tonight (Wednesday) she will have a book reading and signing at the Oxford Public Library, 530 Pontiac St, from 6 to 8 p.m. She will repeat the reading/signing tomorrow (Thursday) at the Marguerite deAngelia Library Branch at 921 W. Nepessing St., in Lapeer, also from 6 to 8 p.m.

“Love’s Final Sunrise is not a ‘feel good’ book,” she said. “It’s a ‘feel encouraged’ book. It has a beautiful ending, you’ll love it.”

Brakefield’s books are available on Amazon.com and at CrossRiverMedia.com and her website, catherineulrichbrakefield.com.