The Waymaker by Rod Palmer

Ameena Mimms, a Broadway actress, is beckoned back to Alabama by a family secret that is slowly stripping her of her wealth and possessions – stripping her down to her bare name. During worship, she raises holy hands, tears streaming. Fervently, she sings Break Every Chain. Man has undoubtedly failed her, and she can no longer see a way out, so she pleads with God to make a way. As if things couldn’t get worse, three gunmen wearing devil masks storm the sanctuary. The bastard son of the philandering head bishop comes to claim his inheritance and Ameena finds herself, in the midst of gun fire and mass hysteria, standing stock still, staring down the barrel of a gun. Associate Pastor Will Dantzler intercedes and steps in front of the gun, offering his life for the sake of the woman he was once courting, until she turned against him completely, irrevocably, and without explanation. Peering in the eyeholes of the mask of Satan, Will fully expects to be walking on a floor of clouds, directly. After the gunmen leave and every moving thing stops, Will and Ameena are embraced at the center of the sanctuary, as they will be, together, at the center of the ensuing investigation. And this is just the beginning of all the spiritual warfare explored in The Waymaker. You see, months ago, Ameena had rejected Will, for her fear that one detail in his past meant that the prospect of loving him was her entanglement in a generational cycle that she refuses to repeat. However, the investigation into the church shooting will expose her family secret and put her past out there to be judged. After an event where it seems as if evil has won, and in a community reeling in the aftermath of a church shooting, God reminds man who is in control. God shows that when He is good and ready, He’ll use whoever He pleases – a skin-bleaching first lady, a band of thieves, an atheist, and a Judas – all for His good. In plain view of God, man will commit sin in order to hide previous sins from man.