Reverend Nanci Series
Notice: This series contains graphic themes of Christianity, faith, salvation, redemption, and religious experience. If you object to such material, you have been warned.
Note to readers: The Reverend Nanci story is complicated and spread over parts of the Dawnwalker series as well as this one. I consider Down By the Riverside to be book one of this series, as well as a part of the Dawnwalker series, because it involves a lot of Canyon Tours characters in the Grand Canyon. Hickory Run is the second book of the series. Although much of it is set in the Grand Canyon, the Canyon and Canyon Tours are a small part of the book, and it is even less in Circuit Rider.
However, there are two books in the Dawnwalker series that tell a significant part of Nanci’s story, and probably could be referred to as “prequels.”
The first is Dawnwalker itself. In that book, Nanci is a self-centered teenage playgirl without much sense of responsibility, and whose only objective is to have fun, not realizing that she’s on a serious slide downhill. While she’s only a small part of the book, the reaction of others to her actions plays a big part of the whole story.
The second prequel is Canyon Fires. While Nanci’s recovery, redemption and conversion is a part of the book, it is only one of several story lines, although in my opinion Nanci’s is the most powerful.
Nanci also has cameo appearances in several other Dawnwalker stories, most notably River Rat, but most of what happens in those cameos is recapitulated in Down By the Riverside.
For a character who was first cast as a semi-villain and was something of a throwaway, Nanci and I have come a long, long way. — WB
Books in Publication order
Down by the Riverside
The Grand Canyon can change lives, and with the help of some of the people and things Nanci Chladek found there it changed hers more than most. Once a prisoner of many irresponsible bad choices, she had been near ending her life. Her dramatic turn away from the life she'd once led cleaned up her act and had made her become pretty religious as she learned to be a Grand Canyon boatman. With a future in front of her that she had once nearly given up on having, she has to figure out what to do with it. It will take her family, her friends, and her newfound faith to help her work it out.
Hickory Run
While attending seminary, young woman minister and Colorado River boatman Rev. Nanci Chladek becomes concerned with the problems of her suitemate, a shy, withdrawn girl by the name of Sarah Lackamp. Sarah's parents are missionaries getting set to return to their African mission station, so all too soon she will have to live outside of the protection of school and family. Nanci feels her friend isn't ready for life on her own. She does pull Sarah out of her shell a little, but it turns out that Sarah's problems are different and deeper than Nanci could have believed. How can Nanci help Sarah live in the big bad world of today? What changes will Sarah have to finally accept in order to make it on her own?
Circuit Rider
A week into her first pastorate in two small Southeastern Colorado ranching community churches, Reverend Nanci Chladek takes in an abandoned teenage girl. She finds that Amber is disliked intensely by the leaders of the communities and of her churches. This brings discord to the two communities, and most of that displeasure is aimed right at Nanci for doing what she thought of as her job as a minister by trying to help someone in need. Can Nanci gently quench the antagonism of these survivors of previous adversarial battles -- verbal, mental, and physical? In the middle of this the pastor of a third church starts heaping more trouble of a different sort on Nanci. She has battles to fight or possibly lose the congregations of the churches in her first assignment. She revels in the job, which she has worked long and hard to prepare for.
