book launch

Kim VanderPoel knows the cancer journey from both sides of the hospital bed. A former nurse who spent nearly thirty years in healthcare, Kim was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer at age forty and began writing during treatment as a way to process the fear, faith, humor, and grief that came with it. She later founded Hope Lives Now, a faith-based resource offering honest encouragement and hope to people navigating difficult health journeys, and to the family and friends walking beside them.

Her book, Faces of Cancer: The Emotions No One Prepares You For, and the God Who Meets You There, is a compassionate companion for the emotional and spiritual side of cancer—the part that can be hard to explain to family, friends, and sometimes even yourself.

Gretchen Reis, MD, has spent her career helping patients find freedom from the kind of stress that shows up not just as a feeling, but as a physical reality. Trained in both Family Medicine and Integrative Medicine, Gretchen founded Integrity Wellness MD in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she and her team take a whole-person approach.

Her book, From Chronically Stressed to Fully Blessed: A Faith-Filled Functional Medicine Approach to Breaking Free from Stress and Overwhelm, is a natural extension of that mission. It’s a resource for the woman who has tried to push through or ignore her stress only to discover it never fully goes away.

Dr. Harold J. Berry has taught and preached the Bible since he was seventeen years old, a faithful minister of the Word whose decades of study and service have left a legacy that extends far beyond any single sermon or classroom. A former professor of Bible and Greek at Grace University of Omaha and longtime personal assistant to Theodore H. Epp, the founder of Back to the Bible, Dr. Berry holds a Master of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Divinity from Grace University.

He has authored many books, each one an invitation to receive, reflect, and respond to the Scriptures he has spent a lifetime studying.

Julia Erman is a wife, mother, speaker, and advocate with the mission of helping families build compassion and understanding around disability. As a mother to two children affected by a rare genetic disorder, Julia found herself not only navigating the everyday realities of special needs parenting, but also noticing something bigger—a lack of language and confidence many people feel when talking about disability with children.

That gap is what led her to write. Her first book, Hazelnut, It’s Time to Get Up, tells her daughter’s story with warmth and hope, and has become a meaningful resource for parents, educators, and caregivers.

In her debut poetry devotional, In the Stillness: 40 Days of Poems for the One Learning to Abide, author Stacy Brantner invites readers to slow their hurried hearts and discover peace in the presence of Jesus. Written out of her own journey of recovery and healing, Stacy’s words tenderly guide others who are learning to trust God again after seasons of loss and pain.

Through forty days of original poems paired with Scripture and prayer, In the Stillness offers a rhythm of reflection that leads readers from brokenness toward abiding.