The Edge of Tidal Pools
by Michele Phoenix
Category: Fiction

When Casey arrives on the Ile de Batz, a small island off the coast of France, she is just as ragged and desolate as the coastline that materializes out of the mist. She has exiled herself to a foreign land to escape her past, but finds in this inhospitable place that it cannot be outrun. One of her students, the child of missionaries, is at the root of her turmoil, and the tragedy of his life has sent Casey's faith spiraling downward into incomprehension and despair. Yet from her first inauspicious encounter with islanders, Casey realizes that the Ile de Batz is not going to be the haven she had sought. Her presence on the small island is unwelcome and all but one enigmatic stranger, Luke, treat her with open hostility. Rife with fierce emotions and profound realizations, "The Edge of Tidal Pools" follows Casey's journey through brokenness, while offering a glimpse into the often-misunderstood plight of missionaries' children. www.tidalpoolsonline.com Born in France to an American mother and a Canadian father, Michele Phoenix is an international writer with multi-cultural sensitivities. A graduate of Wheaton College, she currently works in Europe, at the boarding school for missionaries' kids she attended as a teenager. She has spent the past fourteen years there communicating her passion for music and theater to her students while striving to know and understand them better. Though "The Edge of Tidal Pools" is fictional, it draws on Michele's experiences with the young people she loves and on her personal journey through the challenges of frail humanity and wounded faith.