FRUITS OF THE LATIHAN
by Elizabeth Flanders

My grandson has said since he was very young that he came here to help the earth, and he and I share a deep love for nature. During Covid, he had online school while my daughter and son-in-law were working outside the home, so we zoomed a lot. He was 10 years old at the time and one of the things we shared was a book about a boy and a dragon. When he was able to go back to school, I missed him and one day, overcome with love, I spontaneously began writing a story about a boy and a dragon, a love letter to Mother Earth. I wrote it because it made me feel good, and I shared it with a few people; the feedback I received was it made the readers feel good as well.

At this point I began receiving to publish the story.  Now I’m faithful at following my guidance, but I saw no outer reality to this idea. I was 76 and had just had two life threatening stays in the ICU. Plus, I had no money, so I let it go, but the receiving kept coming. So… in exasperation one day I yelled out, “Then show me the money!”

The very next day, a friend I had shared the story with totally surprising herself blurted out, “I’ll finance publishing your story. I’m all in,” and that was just the beginning of a cascade of synchronicities. Now it was clear I had to publish. Another friend referred me to the editor who had worked with her, a gifted writer in his own right and of Indigenous descent. Two months previously he had had a dream that an unlikely author would receive a story with a message needed at this time, and she would need support. He understood my story in his cells.

Those of you who have self-published a book know how much work it is. I’ve had to make so many decisions about things I previously knew nothing about, and it has been daunting. Yet whatever support I needed just came. All I had to do was ask for help, and it would come, often from an unexpected direction. 

My grandson is a teenager now and is exploring environmental engineering as a possible career. I have received he is only one of a generation of young people here to help Mother Earth during this time of great change. I wrote this story for him and the Grace of the Latihan has made it available for others as well.

Introducing Sam, Maddie, and the Miracle Dragon: Two Inspired Teens and Their Quest to Discover Mother Earth’s Secrets.  If interested, please check out the editorial and reader reviews on Amazon for this Latihan miracle.

Multi-Award Winning

A unique blend of natural and supernatural, this inspirational and highly educational novel provides up-to-date information about the environmental dangers facing young people today and what they can do to respond as Earth- and Water-Protectors. This story is written for the middle grades. It makes a powerful read aloud for younger children and adults are inspired by it as well.

Sam and Maddie, 14-year-old neighbors in rural Washington state, are drawn unexpectedly into The Mother Tree’s powerful vortex and find a portal where they meet SilverLight, a thousands-years-old master dragon, who begins to teach them Mother Earth’s Secrets as no mere mortal could. The two teens, joined by Sam’s grandmother Nana and Maddie’s dog Sparks, are magically transported by SilverLight back and forth between the everyday world of school and family and the various Realms of Possibilities that exist in other dimensions.

Multiple Book Awards

• Both Winner (Green Living) and Finalist (Juvenile Fiction) in the National Indie Excellence Awards
• Silver Nautilus Winner (Middle Grade Fiction)
• 2nd Place in BookFest (Juvenile Fantasy and Magic for the Middle Grades)