I’ve always planned ahead.
It’s a quirk which has been at alternate times an enormous strength and a treacherous flaw. I remember picking up a baby name booklet at the grocery store-checkout line when I was maybe nine years old, thumbing through it just so I could get a bead on what I might name my future child who I assumed would arrive some fifteen to twenty years down the line.
“Can we get this?” I asked my mom.
She smiled and—probably because she knew it would occupy my mind for a healthy duration of her minimal free time—threw it in our cart.
That evening at home, when I was poring over the seemingly endless list of names and their meanings, she said, “Do you know what your name means?”
I put the booklet down. “No.”
“It means ‘truth,’” she said.
From that moment on, I took my name to heart, and I’ve always planned ahead.
But I never could have planned for a season of depression so deep, I was unsure if I’d see the next day’s light.
I—a normally even-keeled person—couldn’t possibly have plotted an escape plan from anxiety that would cripple me.
I didn’t know how. But I kept telling the truth about how I felt. To my doctor. To my co-workers. To my husband. To our friends. To my psychologist. To my church. And finally, to a blank Word document.
I couldn’t have planned that words I wrote in the thick of despair would be used by a good God to heal me. I wouldn’t have believed tying my story to a fictional character’s could break real chains of darkness. I never could have imagined how sharing this story with others would shape my family’s future, but I’m so glad it has.
Now, at times, it’s hard for me to plan ahead. Life in all its pain and beauty has a tendency of getting in the way. But I will always tell the story God puts in my heart, and I will always tell the truth.
Deep Cries Out is available now
Aimee Rojas is a tenacious single mother at the height of her career in sales—until an unexpected diagnosis brings her life to a grinding halt. Retreating to Galveston Island on the coast of Texas, Aimee is immediately surrounded with supportive family and friends. However, she soon realizes accepting help from those closest to her comes with its own nuanced complexities. Aimee’s beloved cousin reappears in her life, complete with his spiraling opioid addiction, and her handsome co-worker continues to keep her mind racing in spite of her hiatus from the job. The brightest spark of joy in Aimee’s life is her daughter Anna, who quickly befriends the family next door. As Aimee grapples with the physical and mental effects of her illness, she has no idea her healing will involve the love of a man whose past is just as complicated as her own, and the surfacing of a lie which might not only end her career, but her life.
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Allison Nance has been writing and singing all kinds of words since before she can remember. Deep Cries Out is her debut novel.
With a career in fine dining and special events spanning two continents and almost as many decades, Allison currently resides in Houston, Texas, with her family.
If she’s not writing, she’s probably baking.