They called him the golden boy. Then they stopped calling.
Joel Brooks is seventeen and everything is going right. He leads worship at a church that adores him. He writes songs that make people cry. Adults point at him and tell their own sons to take notes.
Then his father is accused, the story reaches the papers, and it comes apart in a week. His friends stop replying. The corridor goes quiet when he walks it. And God, who used to feel closer than anyone in the room, says nothing at all.
Joel has spent his whole life being the answer. Now he has to survive a season where there isn't one.
A modern retelling of Job. It doesn't pretend the silence is easy, and it doesn't end it early.
Written to be read
Before the Morning is written for readers of twelve and up who find most books at that age too heavy going. Short chapters, direct sentences, and a story that moves - without talking down to anyone or thinning out what it has to say.
If you know a teenager who has stopped reading, or one going through something nobody in church seems willing to name, this was written for them.
First in the Awakening a Generation of Kings series.