From the author of the popular Mildred Budge church lady books comes a brand-new spin-off series featuring the friends of Mildred Budge and how they see the same world Miss Budge inhabits—and her, too. In Belle, the first book in the new series, friends of Mildred Budge see life in Cloverdale through the eyes of Belle Deerborn. Belle Deerborn lives next door to Mildred Budge. The Deerborn house is across and open field, and Belle sits out on her back stoop each morning reading her Bible and also watching Mildred live and the people who come and go. Others see Belle as living a confined ...

When a church lady falls in love, she falls hard. Sometimes she lands on her knees. Miss Budge does as she moves quietly and powerfully through her daily life in Old Cloverdale, where F. Scott Fitzgerald once courted Zelda, and two miles away Nat King Cole was born. Fitzgerald wrote about love. Nat Cole sang about love, and Mildred Budge knows those words. She can sing along with Nat and has. But Miss Budge lives love too—is always in love. The world wants a certain kind of love. Miss Budge offers a different kind—one that is so rare, so foreign as to be misunderstood…. But make no ...

“Don’t you ever want to run away from Christmas?” Mildred Budge’s answer to Dixie was immediate and truthful. “Yes, yes, yes,” Mildred said with conviction. She couldn’t stop saying yes, though the very idea that a good church lady would want to run away from the occasion during the year that marked the birth of Jesus-- the reason for the season for a tried and true church lady of the South-- was almost beyond explanation. “Then, let’s go. Let’s go to Fountain City and find Mr. Fixit and eat sublime pies,” her friend Dixie urged. The two needed Mr. Fixit because of a ...

What do church ladies really think? Composed and often so quiet as to be thought invisible, church ladies have secret powers to change the world. What are those special powers? They love well. They give well. They can often cook! And they play an essential role in a great rescue operation for mankind. For although they appear to have Ninja warrior strengths (and can be invisible!), they are helpers to the only Superhero who ever really saved the world and mankind. They know His name and will tell you. And they can show you what it's like to brought to life and empowered to love instead of ...

When the car sailed over the embankment carrying the four members of the pulpit committee, Mildred Budge called out, “Jesus saves.” The others heard it, but they were also experiencing their own quick flashes of insight. Liz, a serial widow, felt unsatisfied with her life. She wanted more. Sailing toward her death, she still did. Sam, who had turned the steering wheel that had sent them over the embankment, was looking forward to the crash. He wanted to feel it—the hard slam of collision. His hands held the wheel tightly, bracing for it. Jake smiled. He resisted holding Mildred’s ...