UNCHAINED, TESTAMENT, DAY OF DECLARATION TRILOGY

Unchained is the first book in the Study Guide edition trilogy, followed by Testament, and Day of Declaration. Each book as a study guide section designed to follow up the reading of the book with a comprehensive discussion of the issues raised. Updating the ancient story of Good VS Evil as told through the eyes of the main characters, Holden Harwell and Fallon Ford. High school juniors, Holden Harwell and Fallon Ford meet when Fallon notices how depressed Holden is because of a recent tragedy that claimed the lives of his entire family. Trying to help, Fallon arranges for Holden to attend her youth group's ski retreat. There, Holden, along in the woods, turns his back on God to embrace the Guardian. The powers that come with his conversion are seductive and soon Fallon agrees to follow him down the same dark path. Holden is soon seducing the world to follow the Guardian's Way. The suicide of Fallon's best friend, Lydia, after a sexting incident during a rave, ends Unchained.


Unchained was the result of a writing team collaboration with contributing editor Madison Dillard, editor Richard Bencriscutto, and a former youth pastor who wishes to remain anonymous. Unchained can be purchased by going to www.LULU.com and searching for the title. Unchained is also a Kindle book and can be purchased at www.lighthousechristianpublishing.com.


In Testament, the Guardian, Lucifer's son, chooses Holden to lead a rebellion that results in the persecution of Christians worldwide. Fallon and Holden are now freshmen at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and recruit students while their movement spreads through the city, state, nation, and world. In a final attempt to wipe Christianity from the earth, the Guardian falters when Fallon, the last Christian standing, is protected and spared death during the Guardian's Final Solution ceremony held in the restored Colosseum in Rome. Testament ends with Fallon leaving Rome alone, making her way to Mount Vesuvius. 


In Day of Declaration, Fallon is chosen by God to lead the rebuilding of the Christian Church during the Tribulation and the post-Apocalyptic period to come. Fallon is inspired to begin writing the Kingdom Age Testament, needed because all of the Bibles were destroyed during the Guardian's reign of terror. When Jesus returns to earth, mankind is challenged to live up to new spiritual standards resulting in a new collective "salvation" based on the worldwide application of the Love Thy Neighbor Christian principle through the application of Justice and Sharing. Maitreya is a multidimensional spiritual being who leads the way back to God in the Kingdom Age.

The three trilogy books tell the same story as Maitreya. Testament and Day of Declaration can be purchased by going to www.LULU.com and searching for the book title. 

Find below Chapter 1

I NOTICED HOLDEN DURING the first week of my third year, my junior year at Manistique High School. We shared 4^th hour lunch. He was sitting alone, picking at his food, and staring out the window looking over our Manistique Mustangs athletic field nestled in the scenic rustic rolling forested countryside of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the rocky northern shores of Lake Michigan.   

Lunch after lunch he never spoke to anyone, seemed to be wearing the same clothes each day, and didn’t appear to be grooming, yet, there was something about him. By Friday, I was more concerned than I had any right to be.

“Do you see that guy over there?” I asked Lydia, one of a group of close friends who always ate lunch together going back to junior high.

“The one sitting alone, sure, what about him?” she answered, not volunteering any useful information.

“Well, do you know who he is?”

Lydia stared for a moment, then, answered.

“It can’t be . . . Holden . . . Holden Harwell. I hardly recognize him. Don’t you remember, last year, he was one of the stars on the hockey team,” Lydia offered.

“He was my partner in science and helped me get an A. I wonder what’s wrong with him,” Blaire added, caught up in our concern for Holden.

“No, he certainly doesn’t look good. Anyone know if something happened over the summer?” I asked.

No one had any idea what might have caused such a profound change in a guy who only last year seemed to be on top of his world; popular, a good student, an athlete with a scholarship and plans to attend Michigan State. I wasn’t sure what to do next, then, fate intervened. Holden transferred into my last hour English class. That week we were assigned to read and analyze Catcher in the Rye. 

There he presented the same sullen mood, sitting in the back of the room staring out the window with a blank look and didn’t even bother to acknowledge when our teacher, Mr. Kostos, asked Holden what he thought the title, Catcher in the Rye, meant and where it came from in the story. Being last hour, when class ended I had a chance to follow Holden, first to his locker, then out the front door where he always went to walk home east down Lake Shore Drive.

Over the next few weeks things didn’t get any better with his moods or appearance so I decided to find a day when I could walk home with Holden. 

It was a beautiful early October fall Friday in our small town of Manistique, Michigan, and the dignified oaks, and sprawling maples lining the street, were proudly displaying their appealing colors—singed shades of burnt orange blending into robust rusts and earth-tone ebony.  I finally caught up to Holden, somewhat out of breath. 

 “Hey, wait up. Did you write down our English assignment? I must have been daydreaming or something, but I completely missed what Mr. Kostos said to do?” I asked while trotting to catch up to Holden, shuffling aside leaves with each step.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t pay much attention to anything he said today.”

“Holden, right?”

“Yep, that’s me . . . and you are . . . ?”

“Fallon . . . Fallon Ford, remember, we had History together last year.”

“I’m sorry . . . no . . . but don’t take it personally, last year’s a blur,” Holden added, displaying a listlessness that seemed a clinical indication he really wasn’t well.

“Do you live nearby?  I’ve noticed you walking off this way most afternoons after school.”

“Well, I’m staying with my aunt and uncle.”

“Why is that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“My parents, they were killed in a car accident in July, along with my sister and brother. I was in Toronto at a summer hockey camp, or I’d be dead too.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” searching for the right words to help Holden heal from such a tragedy.

After he told me about his family, I could see he got upset.

“How come you didn’t tell anyone?”

“Fallon, it was nice to meet you, but please excuse me . . . I need to be alone right now.”

“Oh . . . sure, I’ll see you around school.”

With that, Holden abruptly picked up his pace, turning on Hickory Drive to the home where he was staying. A little disappointed, but realizing that I’d managed to uncover the reason for Holden’s somber mood, I headed back to school.

Walking along, I couldn’t wait to share the news with my girls and texted Lydia who I knew would spread the word.

I found out what happened to Holden . . . a car accident took his entire family . . . more later.

I sent the text and felt much better until I stopped, frozen, to face the cold reality that I didn’t have much to offer to fill such an awful void. 

I thought of myself as a Christian, tried to practice Christian principles, was “born again” at a summer Bible camp when I was ten years old, but what comfort would it be for me to try and tell Holden that it was God’s plan for his family to be wiped out in that terrible senseless accident. How could he be expected to accept that?

The entire weekend Holden didn’t leave his house, didn’t come down to dinner when called, didn’t get out of his clothes, didn’t shower, didn’t answer his cell, didn’t return any of his text messages.  Weekend after weekend he’d typically fix some food, take it up to his room, then pick at it because in his state, the appeal of the scent of the food was completely missing. Then, after giving up on eating he’d often zone out to the somber classic rock from one his favorite 70’s bands—often choosing the mesmerizing rifts of Deep Purple. 

He usually fell asleep during that iPod session and after waking up often would go online to continue developing his avatar on Diablo II, or log onto his WoW account to fight off some monster; both alternate realities he much preferred to what his life had actually become since that fateful day when a driver, distracted by texting, drifted over into his parents’ lane leading to the fatal head-on collision.

His weekdays were a little better. Though failing all his classes for lack of any effort, he was forced by his guardians, and the law, to regularly attend school. Unfortunately, that meant he was dropped from the school hockey team because of poor grades. There was a pickup group of good players that met most weekday nights in winter, at a lighted ice-skating pond that froze over by November near his neighborhood, or at the public indoor rink that was open all year round. 

Instead of being a healthy athletic release for his pent-up grief, Holden let his anger over what happened to his family seep onto the ice. Hockey is already a violent contact sport, but Holden became brutal and unforgiving at dishing out bone-crunching checks and reckless assaults on goal. Fights often broke out as a result, but he didn’t care—and he didn’t care who won the brawls. He only knew that when he released his rage, or when he was in physical pain, that gut-wrenching sense of loss he carried around like the Christ’s cross was gone for a while. 

When even that didn’t help, Holden withdrew into a pen-on-paper isolation chamber where writing, like running, could lead to a twilight zone where time stopped and nothing else mattered.

His journaling began in high school and continued after the accident. Adding reflections almost daily, especially when he couldn’t sleep, page after rambling page, the written account of his descent into a deep depression grew. Somehow writing helped to purge his anger, yet he never read the entries, nor would he allow anyone else to read them.

Two other solitary diversions, Holden had been studying classical and folk acoustic guitar and although he stopped his lessons after the accident, he still found solace in the melancholy melodies he knew by heart, or he would merely drift into extended episodes of improvisation . . . the musical equivalent of his written journal entries. His new home also had a workout room with exercise machines.

Like the violent hockey games, Holden knew he could lose track of time, eliminate any thoughts, and most of all extinguish any feelings, on the stairmaster. A trained, toned athlete, Holden knew how to persist, step after step, thrust after thrust, sweat dripping, chest heaving, until he’d achieved a runner’s-high-like euphoria. Upon reaching that state, reality ceased and he could drift in the nirvana of simplicity of spirit and detachment from everything. I was hoping to introduce Holden to some spiritual tools to help him cope.                

I believed that somewhere in scripture were the words, the wisdom, to fill his terrible void and soften his hardened heart. I knew that before I could do anything, I had to find a way to get closer to Holden. It wasn’t going to be easy.