Jack is her freedom. Silas, her salvation. God? He's the building that buries her. It's 1917, and Halifax is at war. Silas Quinn, street sweeper and army reject, remains on the home front, shunning God and society as religiously as they shun him. But the night he stumbles across a half-frozen prostitute, his eyes blink open, and his greater purpose is born: preserve and protect. There'd been a day when shop girl Helen Fraser was desperate enough to believe a few nights in a brothel would cure her troubles. By some miracle, Major Jack Gordon deemed her worth saving, but Helen knows her meticulously recreated identity cannot last. What she doesn't expect is for its destruction to come about, not by a john or one of the madam's goons, but by a force great enough to flatten a city and bury her alive. Set against the backdrop of the Halifax Explosion, Beautiful in His Sight is a Christian historical romance that explores unequivocal grace and identity in Christ. My novels are never purely fiction. They are stories constructed around truth, around some segment of the past that's both stunning and stunningly forgotten. For those who like a little more of the truth behind the story...   The Story Behind the Setting By December 1917, Halifax had passed tens of thousands of soldiers and sailors through its railyard and onto the naval vessels in its harbor. With the military came the prostitutes who migrated in droves to the slums. It's reported that some days, the only passengers disembarking from the trains were women in short skirts. Slumdom's seams overflowed with carnality, public drunkenness, and solicitations. Prostitution wasn't the only job to be had for women. With so many men wearing army green, ladies of the proper class and training stepped behind registers and bookkeeping desks and kept Halifax running. This is the world in which we find our female lead, Helen Fraser. The Story Behind the Name The name Helen Fraser is an honoring nod to two courageous young women who survived the explosion. These are their stories: When Richmond blew, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Fraser was on Roome Street, two blocks from the epicenter. One second, she stood in the kitchen cooking stew. The next, she woke in the yard. People wandered about screaming. Blood covered them all. Fire was catching her collapsed house. As she stumbled toward it, she "...saw my poor father down on all fours, crawling like an animal, moaning and crying, but I did not stop. I had to get home, though I expected to find them all dead." Her mother, aunt, and seven sisters were all down. None of them could utter a word. Her eleven-year-old brother, Arthur, was buried under rubble, and she couldn't get to him. She turned her attention to the others. "I saw my aunt, who was expecting a baby, dragging her little six-year-old boy by the hand. Her eyes were both blown out of her head, and she was telling him to hurry; he was dead, but she did not know." For hours, Elizabeth sat in the front of her house, breathing smoke, trying to comfort her befuddled family. The next morning, she awoke at the hospital with her brother heavy on her mind, more so because of the blizzard. Tears streaming, she declared, "I'm going to find Arthur." With that, she left. Elizabeth trekked through miles of devastation and snow sixteen inches deep, wearing nothing for cover but an extra shirt. When she arrived at her house, she called to soldiers working nearby and instructed them to dig through the wreckage for Arthur. They did and came out with the boy, then promptly added him to the corpses in their wagon. They wouldn't let her touch him, and before driving off, told her she must go to the morgue at Chebucto School to identify the body. It was dark by the time Elizabeth made it to the school. The building had locked up for the night, so she banged and cried and begged until Donald Morrison, the man on guard, broke regulation and let her in. Together, they checked the rows of mangled bodies, and when she found Arthur, she wailed and fell to her knees. Embracing his ruined body, she bawled, "I found you. I found you." The paper later quoted Morrison as saying, "She cried as I have never seen anyone before or since. I never knew who she was, but to me she was a heroine." And so she is.   Helen Clark, age eight, was beginning her school day at St. Joseph's when she felt something disturbing. "Like thunder was taking place alongside of you," she later said, "instead of up in the sky." She looked to the window and gaped at the glass bowing inward. She flung her arms over her face and ducked an instant before it blew in. When it was over, blood streamed her face. Then, in her words, "The ceiling above gave way at one corner and down two sides of the room, hanging like the flap of a great envelope and spilling out children from the room above." A nun grabbed her arm and said, "My heavenly God, the Germans have arrived! Get down on your knees girls." In lieu of prayer, Helen