Becca Wierwille is the award-winning author of the Road Trip Rescue series and other stories that show kids they are wonderfully created for the unique adventures in their lives. Mom by day and novelist by relatively early in the morning, she wishes she could eat peach pie as often as most writers drink coffee. Despite her dreams of sandy beaches and mountain peaks, she loves living in Pennsylvania with her family.

In this interview, Becca shares some of the internal struggles she had with making the bully from her first book in the Road Trip Rescue series the main character for the third and final book of this series, Road Trip Redemption.

FF: What inspired the story in your book?
After writing Road Trip Rescue and Road Trip Return, the first two books in this series, I felt like God placed the idea on my heart to tell Jada’s story—the bully who had hurt Kimmy (the main character from Road Trip Rescue) before that story even began. I wasn’t so sure about writing Jada’s story. Readers who have already read Road Trip Rescue know Jada. They know how she hurt Kimmy. Would they want to read a book all about her?

Still, if God had given me this idea, I wanted to give it a chance. Slowly, and after many rewrites of the first chapter, Jada’s character became clearer in my mind. A girl who made a big mistake and who now sees her chance to make amends—even if she doesn’t set out to do it in the right way. And so, in the third and final book of the series, we have the story of how Jada finds a stray dog—along with hope for a chance to make things right.

FF: What can you tell us about the main characters in your book?
The main character, Jada, is thirteen years old. Jada loves listening to music and spending time with her older sisters Kate and Olivia, but life has been challenging for her since her family moved from Pennsylvania to Florida last summer. She’s become the target of a school bully—and at the start of the story, she realizes how her past actions have made her no better than that very bully.

Jada’s sixteen-year-old sister, Olivia, is an introverted artist with a desire to help keep the peace around her. She recently got her driver’s license and wants to be a children’s book illustrator one day.

Jada’s nineteen-year-old sister, Kate, is a college freshman studying pre-med. She is very much a “mama bear” of a big sister, always looking out for Jada and Olivia, even if not in ways they appreciate.

The true identity of the dog in the story, with his golden fur and white patches, is a bit of a mystery.

Over the course of this sister trip, we meet other characters as well—some from the first two books in the Road Trip Rescue series!

FF: Which character surprised you the most?
At the halfway point on their road trip, Jada and her sisters stop to see their nana in North Carolina. Nana is wise, gentle, and has rhythms of prayer that make a big impact on Jada. Nana surprised me with how important her character became to Jada’s spiritual journey, and many readers have told me that Nana is one of their favorite characters in the entire Road Trip Rescue series.

FF: Why do you think storytelling is such a powerful way to share truth?
Stories can share truth by putting us in a character’s shoes and showing the choices they make and the transformation they experience. Because of this, they can help us grow in empathy. I feel like this is especially impactful for Jada’s story because she is a character readers might not want to hear from if they’ve read the first two Road Trip Rescue novels. If we can put ourselves in Jada’s shoes, we might also be able to grow in empathy toward others around us, realizing that there is always another side to the story—and we might have more in common than the “bully” than we expect.

Also, Jesus communicated truth through story all the time using parables, so we follow the example of the greatest storyteller!

FF: What can you tell us about your next book?
While the Road Trip Rescue series is now complete, I am currently working on my next series, The Scout & Barnaby Mysteries! These are funny Christian chapter books for kids 7-12 about a girl and her unusually perceptive dog who team up to solve mysteries at a wilderness camp using her love of vocab and his super sniffer.

FF: How do you get into the right frame of mind to write for your children’s books?
I enjoy doing in-person events, especially school visits and homeschool conventions. These events allow me to meet readers, hear their story ideas, and see their reactions to the Road Trip Rescue novels. This in-person interaction helps me connect with my reader so that while I am writing, I can better picture who I am writing for—and what they would be interested in reading about.

FF: What do you want readers to take away after reading your book?
In all of my stories, I aim to show readers they are wonderfully created by God for the unique adventures in their lives. In this story, I want them to see that they matter because they are children of God, and that God invites them to redemption.

FF: What are the biggest challenges for you as an author writing in children’s literature?
One challenge in writing for a middle grade audience is that I’m not marketing to my readers—I’m marketing to their parents, grandparents, teachers, and other adults. As I mentioned earlier, I always cherish opportunities to share my stories directly with my audience, such as at school visits and homeschool conventions, so those events have become a primary marketing focus.

FF: What authors or books have inspired you as an author?
I’ve always enjoyed Kate DiCamillo’s writing—I loved Because of Winn-Dixie so much that I was excited the first time I shopped at a Winn-Dixie grocery store! The books I read as a child, like The Boxcar Children and Little House on the Prairie books, helped nurture my love of storytelling from a very young age.

FF: How has your faith or world view impacted the way you tell stories?
I believe God has given me the gift of writing sharing stories, and so my faith in Christ is inherently a huge part of my storytelling. Faith is woven naturally into my stories, with my characters openly talking about God because of the way their faith is integrated into their lives. Even more than that, their internal character arcs reflect spiritual transformation as the lies they believe about themselves or the world are replaced with God’s truth.

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Read more about Road Trip Redemption HERE!