The First Ladies Club

By: J.B. Hawker

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The pastor's wife is missing! Is the escaped felon to blame? Whether living in a rectory, manse or parsonage, life married to a small town minister calls for faith, hope, and charity; plus heaping helpings of tact and the skin of a rhinoceros.

New to this life in the small coastal town of Bannoch, Oregon, Naidenne Davidson turns for support to her fellow ministers’ wives of The First Ladies Club. The women share sympathy, friendship and tips on dealing with difficult church members, but when tall, shapely Naidenne catches the eye of an escaped killer, the Club goes beyond mere friendship.

Step into the quaint parlor of the drafty Bannoch Community Fellowship parsonage, nibble a Snickerdoodle, sip your tea from a chipped china cup and share the adventure in this rare blend; faith-filled, heartfelt, and yet edge-of-your-seat suspenseful.
Although some scenes may be too intense for the traditional cozy, rest assured, Gentle Reader, evil gets its just desserts and good will prevail.
Part-time realtor and full-time pastor’s wife, Naidenne Davidson, is too busy coping with life in a small town church parsonage to think about her beauty, let alone imagine what sort of jealousy, envy or desire she is inspiring in the hearts of those around her. Distracted by efforts to fulfill her new duties as unpaid pastoral assistant, Naidenne is caught off guard and no match for the sociopathic killer who abducts her, bent on living out his basest desires. After two suspicious deaths and three disappearances in the small seaside community, law enforcement officials concentrate their suspicions on Naidenne’s husband, Scott. Have the pressures of the pastorate driven Scott to do something terrible? Or are the authorities wasting precious time, with Naidenne’s life hanging in the balance? When even members of Scott’s congregation begin to wonder about his guilt, can Naidenne’s friends in the First Ladies Club, help? Can these women of diverse denominations, ethnicity, cultures and ages put aside their differences and work in harmony to find her? Old friend, Bunny Elder Banks, arrives from Texas to join the search, but is it already too late?

Naidenne is a wonderfully layered protagonist. Her strength doesn’t come from trying to be a heroine in the traditional sense, but from living her faith, navigating community pressures, and leaning on friendship when her world collapses. That makes her abduction all the more harrowing, and the women of the First Ladies Club all the more inspiring as they rally together.