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One line

A retired Tier One operator two years gone from the fight is sought out by a stranger to pull her missionary father out of northern Nigeria — and finds that the only way to save the man is to stop trusting his own hands.

Short description

Nine days after her father was taken from a mission compound in northern Nigeria, Alicia Bennett takes matters into her own hands — making decisions that could send her to prison. Her search leads to a man the Army had buried in a closed file — a retired Tier One soldier, two years gone from the fight, searching out his purpose in God. The Watchman is the first book of The Watchmen, a series about former special operations soldiers who go where nobody else can go, for people nobody else will reach.

Book details

  • Title: The Watchman
  • Series: The Watchmen, Book One
  • Author: John Rusling
  • Genre: Christian action thriller / inspirational suspense
  • Status: First draft complete, in revision
  • Content advisory: sustained combat, the death of a child, grief, and a suicidal character. Faith is central and explicit.

Assets

Cover art and author photo, free to use in coverage of the book.

Interview angles

Suggested, not prescribed — the questions that tend to open the book up:

  • Writing men of violence who are trying to become men of peace, without making either half a lie.
  • Why the team’s competence had to be real for the surrender to mean anything.
  • Ezekiel 33 and what it means to be assigned a duty you didn’t ask for.
  • Handling a suicidal character in Christian fiction without tidying him up.
  • Setting a rescue thriller in northern Nigeria, and the responsibility that comes with using a real place where real people are actually taken.
author photo
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