COTT: 2016 Laurel Award Winner is Delia Latham

Reagan Massey has gone through a great deal of trouble to make her
cousin irresistible to the visiting single minister but things get a
little sticky when Reagan falls in love with Cord Phillips
herself…

Cord doesn’t believe in marital bliss after seeing the mockery his
parents made of their vows. He’s promised himself he’ll live as the
Apostle Paul lived, dedicating himself solely to God. When his heart
turns traitor, Cord has to completely rethink his position on
love.

Things around Riverbend House of Worship take on some humorous,
heart-touching, soul-stirring twists and turns, with Reagan and Cord so
busy getting in God’s way that they can’t see the path He has laid out
for them to travel…together.

A born-and-bred California gal, I grew up in a little community called
Weedpatch. Nope, that’s not a typo. It’s a few miles southeast of
Bakersfield, and in the…well, I won’t say how many years since I left
there…Weedpatch has even found its way onto a map or two.Writing has been my passion since third grade, when I won an essay
writing contest and took home the coveted prize: a beautiful bed doll
with an overstuffed pink, quilted satin skirt. Remember them? Huge,
padded skirts, some (like mine) with flat cardboard bottoms to
accommodate display. The doll’s feet were hidden away somewhere in all
that finery, never again to see the light of day. These fancy ladies
were most often used as centerpieces for beds, and that’s where mine
went – smack in the middle of my unimposing bed in my unmatched,
Salvation Army-furnished bedroom. It was the most elegant item I had
ever owned, and I was one proud little lassie. (Ahem … surely
someone else remembers those dollies?)

Winning that contest made a profound impact on my young psyche – enough
so that I never stopped writing. From those first little songs and poems
and (very bad) short stories, I graduated to Staff Writer for a large
daily newspaper; freelanced for an upper-scale regional magazine; and
finally began writing fiction…which was my goal all along.