The book begins with an unexpected and supernatural pregnancy. It also takes place in the modern day. At least at the moment, abortion is a legal option the protagonist would have.

Because of that, I knew I needed to think about the topic of abortion.

It’s Complicated

The situation is particularly complicated for Tara, the main character.

She has no reason to believe that she’s pregnant, as she’s never engaged in sexual intercourse. So it takes her some time to go to a college campus health center when she misses periods. When they tell her she’s pregnant, she assumes there was a mistake, which is what anyone would think in her circumstances.

The Awakening begins when Tara’s doctor tells her the second pregnancy test also is positive.

The two engage in a frank discussion of how pregnancy could possibly have happened. (In retrospect, the discussion was probably a little too frank. I’m sure it got me ruled out of certain advertising sites early on in the book’s life.)

The doctor has known Tara a long time and believes that she hasn’t engaged in activities that could lead to pregnancy. She does follow-up tests to be sure nothing else is wrong.

Once tests confirm the pregnancy the doctor raises the question of abortion.

She tells Tara she’ll need to make a decision quickly. The state where she lives, Missouri, puts a definite timeframe on when a woman can terminate a pregnancy. That deadline is quickly approaching.

This strikes Tara as extremely unfair. She had no reason to think she was pregnant and has just found out about it. It’s hard for her to think this through so quickly.

The Characters’ Views On Abortion

Minor spoiler below:

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Tara opts to continue her pregnancy. (If she hadn’t, it would have made for a very short book.)

Down the road (literally and figuratively) Tara talks with Cyril, an aspiring deacon from a religious Order that believes Tara’s child will have significance for the world as a messiah.

Cyril idealizes Tara. He says he’s so impressed that she never even considered abortion. To him, that adds to her perfection, as he sees abortion as wrong. He assumes Tara feels the same because her family, and her dad in particular, are very Catholic.

Tara says of course she considered it. It would be a way to put her life back to what she feels it should be. She abstained from sex because she understood how much responsibility and work were involved in parenting and she wanted to wait until she finished college and began medical school before taking any chances on becoming pregnant.

I felt no matter what her views on abortion overall might be, she wouldn’t be human if it didn’t cross her mind that terminating the pregnancy would return her to “normal” life.

Specific Reasons

Unique circumstances also surround Tara’s decision to have her baby.

Her youngest sister is struggling with cancer and may well have a very short life. It would be hard for Tara not to see her decision about continuing her pregnancy or not in connection with her little sister’s possible death.

Also, Tara has a wonderful support system.

It’s true that many of her friends and family fail her when she tells them about her pregnancy. But their reactions are about her being unable to explain how she became pregnant and their fears that she is either not being up front with them or is struggling with mental illness.

Had her pregnancy been a typical one, she would have had a lot of emotional support and as much financial help as her parents and boyfriend were able to offer. Her boyfriend and she probably would have gotten married, just a little bit earlier than planned. (Whether that would have been a good thing is another question.)

Why The Open Questions

That no one other than Cyril expresses a strong view on whether abortion is moral in Tara’s circumstances, or any circumstances, was what, for me, fit the story. The plot is about Tara’s unique experience and not about political issues.

It also reflects my belief that well-intentioned people with strong beliefs can differ for understandable reasons, whether or not I agree with them.

As I learned when researching a short nonfiction book about whether Catholic views about women influenced a U.S. Supreme Court decision on birth control (see How the Virgin Mary Influenced The United States Supreme Court: Catholics, Contraceptives, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc.) they also differ on how they define the terms of the debate.

One reason the abortion debate is so complex is that medicine has a specific definition of abortion, and the Vatican uses a different one.

This difference means that the same statement by two different people can mean two entirely different things. Listeners or other people who join the debate might or might not know that.

What I strove for throughout the entire Awakening Series was to avoid black-and-white answers.

Most characters, including those who oppose Tara, believe they are doing what’s best for humanity.

No one, including Tara, gets an easy answer to “What’s the right thing to do in this situation?”

In the end, I hope this choice made for a more compelling story.

That’s all for today. Stop by next Wednesday when I’ll talk about why Cyril was my favorite character (after Tara) in The Awakening.

The post Questions, Abortion, And The Awakening Supernatural Thriller Series appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

The Awakening (Book 1) and The Unbelievers (Book 2).

Second, the role of women in myth and religion fascinates me. I grew up learning about Christianity from the Catholic perspective, and the Catholic religion is filled with contradictions in its view of Mary, believed to be the mother of Jesus. I had friends in other Christian churches who told me Catholicism was wrong or evil because Catholics “worship” Mary. Apparently aware of that critique, the priests at the church my family attended were careful to emphasize that Mary is not a deity in her own right. On the other hand, though it appears nowhere in the Church’s written gospels, Catholics believe that Mary in and of herself is unique among humans. For one, she is believed to be the only human being conceived without Original Sin, which is the actual meaning of the term Immaculate Conception. And for another, she supposedly never died. Instead, her body was “assumed” into heaven. A pretty amazing feat for someone who is not divine. Many Catholics also believe she has special powers to intercede with Jesus/God and see that prayers are answered.

For all the interest in Mary in the Catholic Church, the Bible coverage of her is limited. If she were real, what was her life like? In her time, far more than now, being unmarried and pregnant did not bode well for a young woman. Yet the Bible says nothing about what she told her parents, relatives, or friends about her situation. The only mention is that Joseph initially intended to reject her, but changed his mind after an angel visited him.

Perhaps because I ultimately found I didn’t believe most of the stories I grew up with, I’m intrigued by the reasoning of those who continue to do so, which is the majority of people in the Chicago area where I live. What I found myself asking is how literal people’s beliefs are. Are they convinced that a little over two thousand years ago a woman named Mary actually one day found herself pregnant despite never having had sex? And, if so, how would they react to a young woman who made that same claim today? It’s one thing to believe that in Biblical times Moses parted the Red Sea or Jesus was born of a virgin, but it’s another to believe anyone who claims to perform miracles today.

Along with that “What if” came my other issue with the major monotheistic religions—that God is represented as male. So when I began putting together my plot idea for The Awakening series, I considered not only what opposition and disbelief a pregnant virgin today would face, but how that might change once she revealed her child would be a girl.

I also wanted to explore many potential causes for such an event, as not all the world is Christian. In fact, my protagonist, Tara Spencer, is not herself religious, though her parents are, which adds to her confusion and makes the issue more complex. The event that starts the story could have been caused by some sort of god, an adversary to god (such as Satan as he is traditionally depicted in our culture), a different supernatural being or force altogether, a scheming scientist, evolution…the possibilities are endless. All these causes remain on the table for most of the series, so the answer to the other question often asked of me, which is whether the series is a Christian one, is no.

I chose to go beyond one thriller and into a four-book series in part due to my original thought that the Biblical character of Mary gets short shrift. In the end, her value is mainly as a Mother with a capital M. (Though Catholicism borrowed a lot of goddess lore in its depiction of her, attempting to draw in believers in goddess culture with some success, thus its contradictory stance on Mary.) Likewise, in stories that flip the narrative and portray a supernatural pregnancy that is a danger to the woman or perhaps to the world, such as Rosemary’s Baby (one of my favorite books), the woman’s role also is primarily as a mother/victim/woman in peril. In contrast, I wanted to explore Tara Spencer, my protagonist, as a protagonist. As a person who is a force in the world who has her own goals, powers, and challenges. Her own friends and enemies. In short, her own life. The Awakening series is primarily about Tara as a person, not as a pregnant woman.

All of the above sometimes leaves me at a loss at cocktail parties or in interviews when I’m asked how I categorize The Awakening series. Books 1 and 2 have spent significant time in Amazon’s Top 100 Occult and Horror best seller lists, though I admit the series has as much in common with The Da Vinci Code as Rosemary’s Baby, as one reviewer pointed out. Religious conspiracy series also seems to fit, though it bothers me because it puts the emphasis on the religious order opposing Tara, the Brotherhood of Andrew, rather than on Tara herself. But the people whose eyes light up when I describe the concept often also love books described as religious conspiracy thrillers, including those of Dan Brown and Joanna Penn. I’ve used the term paranormal thriller, but “paranormal” for the last decade or two seems to call up visions of the Twilight series or paranormal romances. Science fiction/fantasy fans often also like the series, though I don’t usually read the genre. (One exception is that I love Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series which, perhaps not coincidentally, includes a female messiah-type character.) Recently Amazon added a category “Supernatural Thriller,” and that may be the best fit of The Awakening, The Unbelievers, and the last two books in the series.

The reality is, of course, most of us read in more than one genre. I love horror, suspense, mystery, occult, thrillers, and supernatural books. Further, all of us also tend to sub-specialize in our genre reading. I like horror but not gore. I like mysteries and particularly detective stories but not cozies. Other people love suspense but won’t read anything with any hint of the supernatural. In the end, I suppose that’s why I love reading and writing fiction so much. There are so many great stories, and so many ways to tell them.

If you’d like to read more about M.O.S.T. (Mystery, Occult, Suspense, Thriller) books and movies and receive news of my new releases, click here to join my email list. (If you join today, you’ll receive free a short horror story, Ninevah, published exclusively to M.O.S.T. subscribers.)

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