P.K. Thomas turns life’s roadblocks into leaps of faith

When Connecticut native and current Arkansas resident P.K. Thomas was 8 years old, she was sitting in the balcony of her local church with her best friend and watching a movie that had just come out: 1953’s The Robe. For Thomas, the movie was much more than the latest biblical epic starring Richard Burton. “[It] was real to me, and it had a major impact on my life,” she says of the film’s pivotal scene depicting Jesus’ crucifixion. “I saw that God was real....I never doubted God from that moment on.” Aside from her lifelong adherence to her Christian faith, the scene’s impact also led Thomas to write a short story in high school about a little girl watching the Crucifixion and seeing her own father die on the cross next to Jesus.

“Forty-five years later, that friend of mine from the church and I got married. I started to write again with him, helping with the editing,” Thomas says. Now Thomas’ own story has become the first of a series of historical Christian novels, Esther’s Story, named in honor of her late grandmother, who had always encouraged her to pursue writing.

Although Thomas had not kept up with writing consistently over the years, she had amassed an impressive amount of life experience. First and foremost was her time in bible college in the early ’70s in California, where she preached on the streets all over the state. There, Thomas learned of missionaries venturing into Russia, and when asked what she wanted to do next, suddenly Thomas found herself saying, “I want to smuggle Bibles into the Soviet Union.” 

Not long after, Thomas found herself passing through security at a London airport with 20 Bibles strapped to her legs. “But the security guard never found them,” she says. In Moscow, a customs agent discovered a religious-themed pen on a fellow traveler, “But the guard was so frustrated over the pen that he just waved me through. That was how we got the Bibles into Russia.”

In Esther’s Story,which Kirkus Reviews calls “moving and elegant,” Thomas was able to draw from that specific experience to craft one of the novel’s tensest moments. After having witnessed the Crucifixion, the young protagonist, Esther, is taken in by none other than Mary Magdalene and becomes part of the very early church, seeing her brand-new faith tested by the hostile reality of the first century. At one point, Esther feels called to lead 23 orphans out of Rome but fears how they will evade the city’s guards:

“Lord, please show me the way,” I whispered. “Just walk across,” the voice within my head said firmly. I prayed, “Lord, you have made those who were blind to see, please dear God, make these men who can see to be blind so that they will not see us as we walk past them.”

Then as we crossed over the crest of the bridge, I could see that there was only one guard at this side of the bridge and he was snoring loudly….The guard never woke up, and we were now all safely across the bridge, heading away from the city of Rome.

“It was like me going through security with the Bibles and praying that the Lord would help us get across,” says Thomas. In the years since her Bible smuggling, Thomas has stayed busy: She earned a private pilot’s license and flew all around North America; completed a degree in art at the University of Arkansas; spent several years in summer-stock theaters, meeting celebrities like Merv Griffin and Jayne Mansfield; and even won an award from the Environmental Protection Agency for advocating for Arkansas’ Wellhead Protection Program.

While none of that seems directly related to a young woman navigating the dangers of the first century, Thomas was able to call upon her training in acting to feel out the book’s dialogue and make historical figures like Mary Magdalene or the Apostle Andrew seem more real. She also used her scrupulous eye for detail to dig deep into both Scriptures and history. “I studied the places, the cities, the towns, the politics. I studied the customs, the topography, the geology,” says Thomas. “I studied the most minor things in order to make [the story] come to life.”

The main theme that Thomas imbued into Esther’s Story,however, is inspired by the many twists and turns that her life has taken. “My life has been filled with many different angles or directions, and the Lord has always led me down a road only to put a roadblock in,” she says. Among the early difficulties that stopped her from continuing to pursue being a pilot or acting was an early diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. Years later, she also battled cancer and was left with lasting effects from radiation that actually encouraged her to start writing again, as she could pursue it from the comfort of home. 

“It seemed like the Lord kept closing doors and closing doors,” Thomas explains. For her, it was important that Esther face similar trials—such as her voyage to Rome, which she undertakes originally in order to help her brother, not to save the 23 orphans. “And she’s upset by that because that’s not the prayer that she asked God for,” Thomas says. “But then she understands there is some other reason.”

Esther’s Story may be set in the early days of the church, but it reflects the important lessons Thomas has learned throughout her life and in her faith that she wants to share with everyone today. “The answer to your prayers is not always yes. Sometimes God wants you to do something different, and that forces you to go through another door, just like all those doors that he closed for me.”

Rhett Morgan is a writer and translator based in Paris.