Spokane pastor pens YA novel with adoption theme

All books are born from an idea. A word. A picture. A dream.

“The House of DunRaven” (Resource Publications, an imprint of Wipf and Stock, 2016) by first-time author Steven Lympus, was birthed from a single sentence that came to him nine years ago.

Most bedtime stories are supposed to put you to sleep, but those were never the kind of stories my dad told me at night.

Lympus, 43, is the pastor of Shadle Park Presbyterian Church. From his office, he recalled the beginnings of his young adult novel.

“I was a pastor in a small town just outside Yellowstone National Park when that phrase came to me,” he said. “So I sat down in an Adirondack chair on my porch, opened a beer and my laptop and began to write.”

He and his wife, Laura, had just completed mountains of paper work, background checks and a home study in their efforts to adopt a child.

“We were told it would take a year and I needed a project to keep myself distracted during that year,” he said.

Then he laughed.

“What happened was we got our son two months later!”

Seventeen months after that, they adopted a second son. Hence the nine-year book project.

“The House of DunRaven” is Book One of the Benjamin Stories, a planned seven-book series.

“As soon as I started, I knew it would be part of a series. I knew I wanted to see Ben grow up.” Lympus said. “I know I have to speed it up if I’m going to finish it.”

He hadn’t necessarily planned on becoming an author, or, for that matter, a pastor.

“I went to J-school at the University of Montana,” he said. “I liked journalism because it was down on the ground, meeting people, asking questions.”

But he interned at a Presbyterian church in Missoula and discovered he loved working with young people.

“I sort of fell into the ministry after college,” he said.

Lympus says it wasn’t that much of a stretch from journalism to the ministry.

“There’s a lot of writing and a weekly deadline that you cannot miss.”

He attended seminary in British Columbia and met his wife while serving at a church in Seattle.

Throughout moving, pastoring and parenting two busy boys, he kept writing. His protagonist, Benjamin Story, had a tale that begged to be told and the theme of adoption is central to that tale.

“The House of DunRaven” is set an alternate world similar to ours. Like his favorite authors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Lympus has created a world with hidden rooms, crucial maps, Biblical themes and an unlikely hero who takes an epic journey.

“DunRaven Pass is in Yellowstone,” Lympus said of the title. “Something about that word and its mystique captured me.”

The book begins with a crisis. Ben has always known he was adopted, but when adoptive mother dies and his father disappears, his need to understand his background and to find his missing dad launches him on a quest for the truth.

The key to finding his father lies in the stories his father has told him, always insisting his son be able to remember each tale.

In one chapter Ben says, “Here’s something you should know about books: they always hold surprises. At least the good books do, anyway.”

And this novel is filled with surprises and plot twists that lead to Ben’s discovering the truth of his own story. That tale will continue in Book Two: “In the Land of Forgetfulness.”

Lympus, who does the bulk of his writing at local coffee shops, said the message he wants to convey is that each of our stories is important.

“Our stories can be forgotten. We live in a world that wants to crush them or plaster them over with things that are untrue about us,” he said. “But our stories are important because they connect us to God’s great big story.”