You can purchase the book on Amazon by following this link:
Amazon.com: Eve's Choice: Discovering God's Blessing (9780687057863): Walter Graham: Books
Below is Senior Pastor Rhonda VanDyke Colby's synopsis and review of this text:
"Eve's Choice is falling from the shelves of our church like ripe fruit ready to be consumed by hungry readers. One reason, certainly, is that we are the author's church family and have familial pride. More importantly, Eve's Choice awakens the thinking Christian's fancy and faith. It whets the post-modern reader's appetite for true knowledge of good and evil. It explores the relationship of chance and choice, of consequence and opportunity, of curses and blessings.
Eve's Choice is a short, imaginative exploration of the biblical narrative of the Fall, Abel's death, Cain's banishment, and the birth of Seth as Eve remembers them. The author honors the biblical text in Genesis and biblical scholarship as he imagines how Eve might tell the story. His reverie invites the reader to consider new perspectives and to ask questions about events that brought both tragedy and joy to Eve, to her family, and to all humankind. Eve recalls her choices, as well as those of her family, and in the process she learns to celebrate the gift of life and to live with a growing trust and faith in God. She comes to believe in God's blessing of all creation.
Readers will not be surprised to learn that the author is United Methodist. In every page is evidence of United Methodism's characteristic focus on grace. Prevenient grace is unmistakable in the actions of "The One" who is blessing even before the man and woman know they are being blessed. Justifying grace and a human being's response in faith are evident even within the book's Old Testament context. God's sanctifying grace producing growth through choice and consequence is present at every turning of the page
While readers will not be surprised to know that the author is United Methodist, they may be shocked to learn he is a man! Graham writes convincingly in the voice of a woman coming to know herself as God intended her to be. There is the full flavor of the feminine as he engages all the reader's senses. Mouths will water with the taste of fruit and fear, failure and forgiveness. How does he understand a woman's desire? How did he learn the unique flavor of guilt in the feminine form, heretofore assumed to pass from generation to generation only on the second X chromosome? How does he speak with such unapologetic clarity of a mother's unconditional love for her children despite their actions and choices? There is even a touch of romance in this religious tale. Graham writes heroically of a heroine who discovers blessings instead of curses while learning the difference between consequences and self-imposed exile. Women readers will ask one another, "How did he know?" Male readers will be puzzled by and envious of his insight into the way women think, feel, and live by faith.
In Eve's Choice, Walter Graham stands boldly at the intersection of biblical interpretation and faith, choice and chance. He calls people (especially lay people like himself) to examine their assumptions about the biblical narrative and to think new thoughts.
Pastors whose church members read Eve's Choice should be warned to be on their toes, ready for a deeper level of dialogue among laity about scripture and discipleship in our postmodern world. I should know. I am Walter Graham's pastor, and Eve's Choice is falling from the shelves at our church like ripe fruit ready to be consumed by hungry readers."
Rhonda VanDyke Colby
Senior Pastor
Bon Air United Methodist Church
Richmond, Virginia
