Meissner, Susan 1961-

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Meissner, Susan 1961-

PERSONAL:

Born January 2, 1961, in San Diego, CA; daughter of Bill and Judy Horning; married Bob Meissner, 1980; children: Stephanie, Joshua, Justin, Eric. Education: Attended Point Loma College, San Diego, CA. Hobbies and other interests: "Teaching workshops on writing, spending time with my family, playing keyboard in worship teams, reading great books, and traveling."

ADDRESSES:

Home—San Diego, CA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, journalist, editor. Mountain Lake/Butterfield Observer Advocate, editor, 1998-2002.

WRITINGS:

Why the Sky Is Blue, Harvest House (Eugene, OR), 2004.

A Window to the World, Harvest House (Eugene, OR), 2005.

The Remedy for Regret, Harvest House Publishers (Eugene, OR), 2005.

In All Deep Places, Harvest House Publishers (Eugene, OR), 2006.

A Seahorse in the Thames, Harvest House Publishers (Eugene, OR), 2006.

Widows and Orphans, Harvest House Publishers (Eugene, OR), 2006.

Days and Hours, Harvest House (Eugene, OR), 2007.

Sticks and Stones, Harvest House Publishers (Eugene, OR), 2007.

Blue Heart Blessed, Harvest House Publishers (Eugene, OR), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Christian novelist Susan Meissner became a published author after many decades of dreaming of a writing life. A wife and a mother, she was moved to write her first novel in 2002 by the death of her paternal grandfather. She noted on her home page: "His passing had a profound effect on me. I suddenly had an incredible urge to write a book; a novel. I knew I didn't want to come to the end of my life having only dreamed of writing one." She quit her job as editor of the local newspaper, and four months later she had a completed manuscript in hand. It took her almost another year to find a publisher for this debut novel, Why the Sky Is Blue, the story of a married woman and mother of two who becomes pregnant after a violent rape. With an unborn baby on the way, this compassionate woman must make hard choices.

Other novels form Meissner involve similarly hard moral decisions and are targeted at both an adult and young adult audience. In A Window to the World, a child's kidnapping tests the religious beliefs of those around her. Reviewing the novel in Booklist, John Mort felt it was "perfect teen fare." Meissner's third novel, The Remedy for Regret, traces Tess Londren's journey of self-discovery as she tries to make sense of her mother's death. Of this effort, a Publishers Weekly contributor concluded: "The novel is readable if not deeply involving, and it refrains from the high melodrama present in many contemporary Christian novels for women." In the 2006 novel A Seahorse in the Thames, Meissner presents a family alternately torn apart and brought back together by personal tragedy. A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that "the characters are well-developed and the plot moves along briskly." Meissner's 2007 work Sticks and Stones, features another female protagonist beset with problems, including a convict brother, a woman out to shoot her, and a dead body that leads her into an ongoing criminal investigation. Dancingword.com contributor Barbara Warren found this to be "an intriguing mystery full of surprising twists and turns."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 2005, John Mort, review of A Window to the World, p. 1643.

Publishers Weekly, November 15, 2004, review of A Window to the World, p. 40; June 13, 2005, review of The Remedy for Regret, p. 34; May 22, 2006, review of A Seahorse in the Thames, p. 31.