MSI Press Blog

  To be released June 30. Watch for it! Book Description: They sold the farm, packed up seven children, and chased a promise called California. Based on Hazel’s journal, this true story follows a family that leaves Wisconsin hoping for relief from brutal winters—only to run out of money with hundreds of miles still to go. Stranded and desperate, they enter a world of labor camps, endless fieldwork, hunger, and exhaustion, where families are worked hard, paid little, and treated as disposable. Once respected and secure, they find themselves suddenly labeled vagrants. Pride becomes a liability. Dignity must be defended daily. And survival depends on grit, faith, and refusing to give up—especially for Hazel, who will not allow poverty to erase who she is or break her family apart. This is a raw, gripping true story of endurance, injustice, and a woman who stood her ground when everything was taken away. Endorsement: Hazel and Olaf is a magnificent story of resilience, persevera...

  They arrive with backpacks full of hope and words that sound different. In the hallways of American schools, immigrant children learn quickly that difference can draw laughter before it earns respect. Their names are shortened, their lunches questioned, their accents mimicked. But beneath those moments of cruelty, something extraordinary is happening. They are learning endurance. They are learning how to translate their parents’ sacrifices into possibility. They are learning that courage sometimes sounds like mispronounced syllables and sometimes looks like showing up again tomorrow. These children grow into adults who speak more than one language of belonging. They become the interpreters, the advocates, the innovators who remind us that America’s strength has always been its mosaic of voices. This Immigrant Heritage Month, let’s honor the children who carried their families’ dreams through the gauntlet of misunderstanding — and turned it into empathy. Their courage is the accen...

  This week editor's choice:   Blest Atheist by Elizabeth Mahlou Book Description: As a young child, outraged by the hypocrisy she finds in a church that does nothing to alleviate the physical and sexual abuse she experiences on a regular basis, Beth delivers an accusatory youth sermon and gets her family expelled from the church. Having locked the door on God, Beth goes on to raise a family of seven children, learn 17 languages, and enjoy a career that takes her to NASA, Washington, and 24 countries. All the time, however, God keeps knocking at the door, protecting and blessing her, which she realizes only decades later. Ultimately, Beth finds God in a very simple yet most unusual way. A very human story, Blest Atheist encompasses the greatest literary themes of all time – alienation, redemption, and even the miraculous. The author’s life experiences, both tragic and tremendous, result in a spiritual journey containing significant ups and downs that ultimately yield gr...