What role does faith play in the story?
Natalie is a woman with all the answers—for everyone else. She is revered as a woman of faith. But when her family and community collapse beneath the actions of her son, she doubts everything. Her true self is revealed, and it’s not pretty. Hardship has a way of doing that to us!
For many of us, it’s easy to put our confidence in our works—in the pretense that we’re actually pretty good people. But you know what? We’re a lot worse off than we fool ourselves into thinking. That’s the bad news. But hold your breath, because the good news is close behind it—we’re also WAY more loved than we know.
Like Natalie, we often busy ourselves trying to hide that unflattering person. We try to protect it, cover it, hope nobody really knows the depths of our messiness. But the gospel tells us that the real us—that one we’re so busy hiding—that’s the one God loves so much. That’s the one Jesus came to redeem.
What lessons or truths do you hope readers will take away from The Hidden Side?
That no matter what we try to conceal, even from ourselves, there is nothing that God can’t free us from. That the only place worth hiding is in Jesus. There, we don’t have to have it all together or pretend to be something we’re not.
We don’t have to be afraid of rejection. He loves us perfectly and enough to do a good work in us—a real work that will draw us closer to Him and make us more like Him. That’s where our true identity resides.
As an author, what did you particularly enjoy about crafting this story?
When I started writing this story, I expected to write in two viewpoints—Natalie, my contemporary character, and Mercy, my historical character. But as I began the story, another character, sixteen-year-old Maelynn, begged to have her story told, and even though I hadn’t planned for her, I couldn’t ignore her either.
I’ve never written in the point of view of a contemporary teenager and I can’t believe how much I enjoyed it. Sure, there was a lot to tackle in this book with Maelynn, but she came alive to me in a very unique way. I absolutely felt her. I was her.
Though I craft many characters, they don’t all speak to me in the same way. To me, Maelynn’s character was especially powerful.
Click through to learn why Heidi chose to tackle such difficult issues in her novel…