Published Works
New Release
A Runaway Christmas Story
With Apologies to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Tchaikovsky
Let me be straight with you: This Christmas story is certifiably moral-free. No sweet Christmas images of families around Christmas trees. No problems solved by acts of generosity and self-sacrifice. This story’s got none of that. To be sure, it’s what the author wanted, but right out of the chute the story took over and went its own way. Instead, it begins with a violent tornado that crashes Santa’s sleigh in a desert somewhere east Jerusalem in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordon. Things go downhill from there. Christmas is ruined. Or not. Everything depends upon the Author, who is, according to the story’s characters, massively incompetent.
Paperback (Amazon)
Featured Release
A Death Of Splendid Daring
A Novel Approach To The Gospel Of Mark
A Death of Splendid Daring is a novel about the Gospel of Mark. Set in 1st Century Rome, the plot revolves around a single household, in which some, but not all, are Christians. There’s a desperate, secret search for an infant with a twisted leg who’s been discarded in the forum by the family’s paterfamilias. There’s a homicide for which the murderer has been found innocent in a court of law, the victim’s father seeking revenge but held in check by the immense power of one of the main characters — a senator. In the background, there’s the death of a Jewish-Christian in the war in Judaea, his father’s grief and rage exploding in an act of desecration against the Roman temple of Mars, the subsequent trial and its fateful consequences.
Fully embroiled in these circumstances, the family acquires a copy of Mark, which they argue about with more than a little ferocity. Since they’re not all Christians, and despite their own intentions, the arguments pull them ever deeper into the message of Mark’s extraordinary book.
Learn More | Kindle (Complete Novel) | Print (Volume 1) (Volume 2) | Study Guide | A Selection of reading (PDF)
John the Baptist:
A Lenten Pilgrimage Through Art
In John the Baptist: A Lenten Pilgrimage Through Art, Dr. Camery-Hoggatt has written a unique biography of John the Baptist, weaving comments about specific pieces of art together with scripture texts and devotional reflections, based on art pieces that were created to depict the significant events of John’s life.
The study guide is a companion for John the Baptist: A Lenten Pilgrimage Through Art that provides two approaches for spending more time reflecting on the devotional as an individual or as a group—(1) the contemplative prayer practice of “Visio divina,” and (2) reflective questions to go with each piece of art and related devotional text. This study guide is provided as a free download.
Print (Amazon) | Study Guide
Reading The Good Book Well
A Guide to Biblical Interpretation
After completing Speaking of God for seminary students, I was asked to rewrite the same concepts in a style that would be accessible for non-seminarians.
Both books guide the reader through a specifically reader-oriented approach to interpreting the Bible known as exegesis. Hint: This means I hold a high commitment to the authority of scripture and to authorial intention as the governing control of hermeneutical method.
Speaking of God
Reading and Preaching the Word of God
This book was written primarily for seminary students as a kind of guide through the quagmire of new vocabulary words they would encounter on their journeys toward ordination. It focuses especially on the interpretation of the Bible.
Commentary on the Gospel of Mark
Good News for Troubled Times
This commentary on the Gospel of Mark focuses on the gospel’s original readers —
- What did Mark expect them to know?
- How did Mark expect them to use that knowledge to unpack the meaning of this gospel?
- What role did the sequence of the material play in shaping the book’s impact on a First Century audience?
It emphasizes the way Mark structures his story to convince his readers that Jesus really is Lord, even when it looks like the world is falling apart. This information can both inform and shape our own interpretation of what the gospel means to us today. This was originally commissioned, written, and published as the Mark section of Zondervan’s Full Life Bible Commentary on the New Testament which was published in 1999 and is now available as an independent Mark commentary, reissued in 2021.
Coffee Shop Spirituality
How What We Say to Each Other Over Coffee Can Deepen Or Damage Our Spiritual Lives
Originally published under the title, Grapevine: The Spirituality of Gossip, this book is an interdisciplinary study of the role of gossip in shaping the spiritual journey.
My thesis is straightforward: When Christians think of the activities that deepen or shape the spiritual life, certain things come almost automatically to mind – Bible study, prayer, worship, evangelism, missions work. In this book I suggest that we may be more deeply influenced by gossip than by all those other things combined. The grind of the rumor mill is where we learn how to understand the meaning of all those other experiences, where we learn what it is or isn’t permissible to believe or to do, and where we learn what happens to people who get out of line.
Accounting for the spiritual life without taking into account the effects of gossip is like trying to account for fish without considering the properties of water.
Between the Monk and the Dragon
A Parable
This is a novel, set in 13th Century England. I wrote it for a student who told me he could kill his father. From the look on his face, I absolutely believe he was telling the truth.
For literary reasons, I cast the protagonist as a girl. One night she’s awakened to find a hatchling dragon in her father’s bed. The next morning her father tells her she’s had a bad dream, then adds: “You can’t tell anyone about this particular dream.” The plot pivots and swirls around this scene.
The story revolves around the theme of family violence, dread, forgiveness, self-care and the possibilities of healing and redemption. If you’ve come face to face with family dragons of your own, you might want to read this book in conjunction with a support person, a therapist, a pastor, or a group of empathic, supportive friends.
When Mother Was Eleven Foot-Four
A Christmas Memory
My first Christmas book, this is a novella about my mom. She was tiny on the outside, but big on the inside. “When I need to be, I’m eleven-foot-four,” she said. Trust me on this. Nobody knew that truth more than my dad and the eight kids in our house.
While I believed she was telling the truth, this is the story about how I learned what that truth really meant.
BTW. The story is about a 45 minute read.
This story is also found in Giver of Gifts.
When Mother Was Eleven Foot-Four
A Christmas Memory
(Children's Book)
The year following the novella about my mom, my publishers called and asked if we could turn it into a children’s book. I learned a lot from the process of translating between the two levels of language.
The artist — Mark Elliott — is a Caldicott Award winner. My sibs loved the way he imagined them. (That’s Joelie with the space helmet.)
Out of print ☹
Giver of Gifts
Three Stories of Christmas Grace
My publishers and I had such a good time with the story about my mom that we decided to expand the collection. This is from the liner notes:
Travel back to Jesus’ birth and discover the tender blessings of his earthly father. Witness the transformation of a young girl as she begins to see others in a gentler light. And learn to be an extravagant giver of gifts from a mother who’s tiny in stature but big in Christmas spirit.
So. Three stories. Of this collection, my favorite is the one about the “young girl who begins to see others in a gentler light.” BTW: One of my students told me he heard the one about Jesus’ earthly father read aloud on Christmas eve. In an Irish cathedral. On a snowy night. Just imagining that makes my heart sing.
My Mother's Wish
An American Christmas Carol
This is from the publisher’s notes:
A grandfather’s song has turned the Comeback Café into hallowed ground. A contrary girl with a gypsy heart feels the tug of home. And a truckdriver named Jedidiah keeps his foot on the gas ready to sweep you into an unforgettable story of belonging and grace.
An affecting tale, My Mother’s Wish will remind you of the power of grand hopes and impossible expectations. You’ll witness the influence every life has on another, and you’ll find new reasons to believe in the comfort and joy in an everyday, American version of the story of Christmas: being known and loved, just as you are.