One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury

First published: Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2003

Genre(s): Novel

Subgenre(s): Evangelical fiction; historical fiction (twenty-first century)

Core issue(s):Agape; awakening; compassion; death; faith; healing; love; memory

Principal characters

• Jake Bryan, a New York firefighter who believes in God
• Jamie Bryan, Jake’s wife, a nonbeliever
• Sierra Bryan, Jake and Jamie’s young daughter
• Eric Michaels, an investment broker in California, a nonbeliever
• Laura Michaels, Eric’s wife, a believer
• Josh Michaels, Eric and Laura’s young son
• Clay Michaels, Eric’s brother, a police officer and believer

Overview

Winner of the 2004 Silver Medallion book award (now called the Christian Book Award), given by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, One Tuesday Morning presents the parallel and interrelated stories of two fictional families, one from the East Coast and one from the West Coast. Author Karen Kingsbury shows how the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center affect the spiritual journeys of these families, couples, and individuals. The novel begins with a funeral of a New York firefighter who died young from a heart attack. Firefighter Jake Bryan and his wife, Jamie, childhood sweethearts, share a deep love for each other and their young daughter, Sierra. Jamie is terrified that her husband will die fighting a fire. However, Jake has faith in God’s plan for himself and his family and wants his wife to return to loving God as she did before the deaths of her parents in an auto accident when she was a teenager. He writes comments in his Bible and in a daily journal to encourage and record Jamie’s progress toward God, so that she can read it as a guide to recover her faith when she is ready.

In Southern California, the marriage of Eric and Laura Michaels is faltering. Formerly close to his wife, Eric has closed his heart to God and his wife after their daughter was stillborn. He turns his focus to work as an investment broker, neglecting Laura and their young son, Josh. Eric’s brother Clay, a police officer, spends time with Laura and Josh; they become especially close when Eric disappears on a business trip to the World Trade Center office during the September 11 collapse.

As Jake ascends the stairs of the World Trade Center’s south tower to save people on the Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001, he passes Eric Michaels, on a business trip from California, who is descending the stairs to safety. When Eric falls, Jake helps him, dropping his helmet, which Eric hands to him; inside is a picture of Jake’s young daughter with her printed name, Sierra. Eric is struck by how much Jake looks like him. Jake and his best friend, Larry Henning, die together in the collapse of the south tower, sacrificing their lives to save other people. Eric is found under a fire truck from Jake’s station, suffering from amnesia; he remembers the name Sierra and he is thought to be Jake.

In order to help the man she thinks is her husband recover his memories, Jamie Bryan reads her husband’s journal and Bible and gives them to Eric. Impressed by Jamie’s goodness, Eric is also touched by the goodness of Jake Bryan and his love for his family as well as his desire for his wife to go to God. Within three months, both are healed and transformed into believers. Jamie discovers Eric’s real identity and helps him reunite with his wife. Eric vows to invest his love and time with his wife and son, both of whom he had ignored in his devotion to work. Jamie, strengthened by her faith in God, becomes strong enough to raise her daughter without Jake. Kingsbury ends the novel with a vision that Jake and Jamie’s daughter, Sierra, has of her father smiling down on her from heaven.

Christian Themes

One Tuesday Morning is Bible-based, rooted in the words of the Bible as a source of strength and comfort to the characters, who attempt to live by the words of God. Jake’s Bible centers the narrative. He contemplates it and writes his thoughts about passages in it every day. In the Puritan tradition, he also writes his thoughts in his journal every day, but he contemplates his wife’s spiritual journey more than his own. Significantly, he writes in private, so that his wife does not feel pressured to accept Jesus as her savior before she is really ready. Hoping that someday his beloved wife will be open to reading his words and accepting God in her life, he feels that her lack of faith is the only element lacking in their relationship. Jake’s concern for his wife’s salvation despicts for the reader the depth and joy of love and faith.

The many layers of words in Jake’s Bible and journal provide the opportunity for salvation for both Jamie and Eric. The dead Jake’s living words serve as a model of God-centered life for the tabula rasa of the amnesiac Eric. The investment broker who has neglected his wife, son, and God learns how to love God. Inspired by God’s love, Eric vows to invest his love in his wife and son. He returns to California transformed. Filtered through the words of Jake Bryan, the Bible saves two nonbelievers. Following the biblical model, Kingsbury uses the words of her novel to tell stories that instruct and inspire. She uses analogies to teach and enliven Christian themes. She foreshadows death with images like sand castles and a melting ice cream cake. She suggests changes and connections in the Staten Island Ferry to and from Manhattan and plane trips from coast to coast.

Kingsbury stresses the Christian belief in family, emphasizing and juxtaposing relationships of brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, wives, and husbands. Jake is a good father, Eric an absent father. Eric’s brother Clay helps his sister-in-law and niece until their real husband and father return. Jake’s fictional fire station is a community of brothers, most of whom die on September 11, leaving a sisterhood of widows who sustain one another through faith in God. Jake’s words in his journal, inspired by God, and his words on God’s Word in the Bible help his spiritual brother Eric to seek his heavenly father. Although the 9/11 tragedy broke up families through death, the faith tested in this horrific trial helps to heal them. The example of the resurrection of Christ, which teaches the birth of hope from despair, guides earthly families. The geographical scope of the novel, which brings together two families from each coast, suggests that the United States is a family, closer and renewed after its greatest tragedy.

The novel attests to the power of transformation through faith. Framed with the deaths of firefighters, it both highlights Jamie Bryan’s fear that her husband will die fighting a fire and transforms it into a love that is depicted in the image of a smiling Jake Bryan, smiling down on his young daughter, gladdening and strengthening her.

Sources for Further Study

Block, Eleanor S. “The Press Reacts to September 11, 2001: A Review of Recent Literature.” Communication Booknotes Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Winter, 2004): 7-23. Reviews One Tuesday Morning in the context of other post-9/11 literature.

Hamilton, Lee H., and Thomas H. Kean. The 911 Report: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004. Offers background for the September 11 attacks, describes what happened on that day, explains the lessons learned, and suggests global strategies to prevent a recurrence.

Kingsbury, Karen. Beyond Tuesday Morning. In One Tuesday Morning/Beyond Tuesday Morning. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006. This sequel to One Tuesday Morning tells the story of how widow Jamie Bryan, after a long period of grieving and guided by her dead husband’s written words, chooses life and love in a strange plot twist.

Williams, Wilda. Review of One Tuesday Morning. Library Journal 128, no. 6 (April 1, 2003): 84. Williams concludes that Kingsbury’s fans will “definitely want this.”