Key points:
- In her new book, “The Memory Garden,” United Methodist Jessica Brodie takes inspiration from stories she shared as a writer and editor of the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate.
- The novel focuses on an unlikely friendship between a journalist and a young boy, who spends all his free time volunteering in church programs.
- Brodie modeled the fictional summer camp in the novel after the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools, which The United Methodist Church actively supports.
“The Memory Garden” — a book about an unlikely friendship between a woman and an 11-year-old boy from different worlds who end up saving each other — was a vision author Jessica Brodie said, “God spoke into my heart.”
This is the first published novel by Brodie, editor of the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate and a member of Mount Hebron United Methodist Church in West Columbia, South Carolina. She said God told her she should write a Christian contemporary novel and the vision felt like “a movie on fast-forward” in her mind.
“The Memory Garden” revolves around two main characters. Rebecca is a woman who has hit rock bottom when she loses her high-profile job as a journalist in New York City and the man she thought she was going to marry dumped her.
Her Bible-toting Granny comes to her rescue, bringing her back to the small town she grew up in and securing her a job at the Dahlia Weekly.
Devon is a devout Christian boy who also has a Bible-toting Memaw. His mother died young, and he lives with his grandmother. He also lives with a lot of secrets, including an abusive uncle, town bullies and crippling poverty.
Devon has built a small memory garden of stones, a cross and little plants in honor of his mother in his yard.
“I wanted everyone to feel like they could see themselves or their church in the book,” Brodie explains. “But United Methodism is woven into every element of this book, all inspired by the stories I’ve covered since 2010 for the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate.”
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The Advocate is the longest continuously published newspaper in Methodism, tracing its roots back to 1825.
Devon spends all his free time volunteering in church programs. As summer approaches, he comes up with the idea of The West Dahlia Leaders Summer Enrichment Camp. He knows he needs a safe place to be during the months school is out.
The town is in one of the poorest school regions in the state, and Devon hears teachers talk about the dipping test scores and “the summer slump” from school.
Rebecca has been tasked with trying to save the weekly paper. She is not too popular when she starts charging for obituaries, birth announcements and cutting back on the photos from the local sports teams.
Her bosses have told her to do more local features. When she hears about the summer school and meets the young boy who started it, she sees a good place to start.
Brodie modeled the fictional summer camp after the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools. The United Methodist Church actively supports the schools that are offered at many United Methodist churches during the summer.
She was introduced to Freedom School at Francis Burns United Methodist Church in Columbia.
“I remember walking in the doors of that church, not knowing what to expect, and being absolutely bowled over by the kids and the young adults, all working together,” she said.
“It was eye-opening and truly important work, and yet it was fun, too,” she said. That was in 2014, and she has gone back every year since to write a story and meet the children.
Brodie has won more than 100 journalism excellence awards from the United Methodist Association of Communicators, Religion Communicators Council and South Carolina Press.
“I just do my best to be a conduit so other people can tell their stories. I try hard to take myself out of the way so they can shine the light. I think of it as my way of being the lampstand that Jesus talked about in Matthew 5:15-16.”
“Tangled Roots,” book two of the series, comes out in the fall and book three, “Hidden Seeds,” will come out in spring 2026.
Gilbert is a freelance writer in Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Julie Dwyer at newsdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digests.
