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@h-jones

Aw, but I know what you mean! It is frustrating seeing all the trash being written, even within “Christian” genres. And I can identify with the struggle of wanting to please everyone with your writing, as well. 🙂 The more I read + study the Word, though, the more that just seems to fade away, and I just want to be a humble tool for His use.

Thanks for asking me! The first WIP I ever started on was a book in which the MC’s mother is raped when getting medicine for her sick mother out on a dark night, on a country road, by a drunk. She ends up in an asylum later on, then escapes after she gives birth (to the MC) in order to leave her daughter at a Catholic orphanage so it would be cared for. Fast forward several years, and you have an older girl searching for her past, her family, and wanting out of her current life. I still think the plot was pretty cool, and I want to write it.

But I am just bringing that up since it seems pretty similar to your dilemma. I think as a story idea, yours is awesome. I also think considering what @cassandraia said about triumphant endings is true…in the end of this WIP, I had the family finding their ultimate hope in Christ, as they all still had problems even after they were united again. 🙂 The ultimate point was that apart from God, we are broken wretches. Showing the truth of that is powerful!

Thus, I would say…yes! Write the story you have in mind. It is a reality in a broken world, a hard truth for many people. BUT…go a little farther, and bring some deeper themes into it. There are a lot of ways you could do this! What if the mother does just what you said, she trains in law and all, but maybe he comes to know the Lord before she can hunt him down, and turns himself in? She might be angry, because the revenge for her daughter she has been imagining for years has been torn from her grasp…and he is SORRY for what he did. Maybe SHE wanted to be the one to make him sorry, the one to bring him in. Then it is a forgiveness process for her, the one who is justly in the right but is inwardly fighting forgiveness and holding bitterness towards him.

Lol, I do not want to take over your cool story idea, but this is an amazing theme, and my mind is flooding with ideas. 😀 She could be prosecuting him, and maybe he did something so bad he is going on death row, and she is the one holding the key to condemning him (and is more than ready to do so)! All the while, he is praying for her, that her heart would be changed, yet he realizes what he did was wrong and is ready to die for his sin and breach of the law. Perhaps right before the trial, or towards the end somewhere, she breaks and forgives him, and drops the charges as she sees the fact that he is a changed man, “a new creature”. You could do all sorts of things in the end.

Ok, I just threw a lot of stuff out there, and that is a long ways from what  you said, so tell me that was not helpful if it wasn’t! 🙂 I just love taking themes like this, and throwing things apart…and then bringing the ultimate, life-changing gift of salvation into it. It seems so much more powerful than just bringing someone to justice, I guess because I like to go to the heart level of the characters. Whatever you do, just don’t scratch the surface; go the distance and dig up deep issues that we all deal with! Those are my thoughts…

As far as younger audiences go, I would say that the way you write certain scenes is everything. When I wrote the initial scenes in the WIP I mentioned, I had her running, then tripping and falling, and he coming up behind her, his drunk-breath approaching…and then it fast-forwards to several months later, her in the asylum and pregnant. That leaves no doubt in the minds of your older audience as to what happened, but neither does it describe things that should not be imagined in the minds of younger people (or, for that matter, older people!). I have read a lot of things I wish I had not, either, over the years, and I do not want to do that for anyone else. Not describing certain things, though, but yet saying enough to make pretty clear what happened, seems like the best way to be real, yet not compromise anyone.

Alright, that is probably more than you wanted, lol! You asked, I guess… 😛  I do really like your ideas!