Book Tour -- The Bark of the Bog Owl -- Day 2

Jonathan Rogers is the father of six kids. As such, he first of all wrote The Bark of the Bog Owl (and the remainder of the Wilderking Trilogy) for his children.

At DayStar E-store, Rogers' bio reads like this:

Rising author Jonathan Rogers' takes biblical fiction to a new level in imaginative fantasy.

Inspired by Tolkien and Lewis Georgia-born author Jonathan Rogers will thrill faith fiction readers of all ages. Desiring to teach his own boys about moral excellence, and encouraged by recent John Eldredge and James Dobson blockbusters, Rogers explains:

"Books like WILD AT HEART and BRINGING UP BOYS remind us that to raise a God-fearing boy is not to domesticate him, but rather to harness and direct his sense of adventure - his God-given wildness. But parents inspired by these books still face the challenge of finding books that will inspire their boys. The Bark of the Bog Owl grows out of my desire to write that kind of book."

Jonathan Rogers grew up in Georgia, where he spent many happy hours in the swamps and riverbottoms on which the wild places of The Wilderking are based. He received his undergraduate degree from Furman University in South Carolina and holds a Ph.D. in seventeenth-century English literature from Vanderbilt University. The Bark of the Bog Owl has already found a receptive audience among Jonathan’s own six children. The Rogers clan lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where Jonathan makes a living as a freelance writer. The Bark of the Bog Owl is his first novel.

Rogers' characters have as much in common with Huck Finn as they do with Frodo Baggins. The author himself says the swampy settings of the novel are rooted in his native Georgia, and those places lend a freshness to the story not found in many other modern fantasies.

What was it I noticed?

It's been less than a year since John Eldredge's book Wild at Heart has come to my attention. Honestly, it's something I wish had been around when we were raising our son (now an adult) because it resonated so deeply with both my husband and I when we read it. Eldredge examines what has happened to manhood in our society and what it really means to be masculine in today's world.

Now I am thinking back to Rogers' novels with a new understanding. He didn't write the *feechiefolk* and their rough and tumble lifestyle (complete with great insults and mocking poetry) just for the fun of having wild people in his novels. He wanted to show the wildness that is in a boy's heart, wanted to respond to it, wanted to nurture it.

If you have ever wondered how to raise a boy effectively, read Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. But if you want your son to RESONATE (that's today's word in case you missed it: resonate) with who his heart longs to be, give him The Bark of the Bog Owl to read.

Mind you, the feechies are a great invention any which way you look at them, even if they're not precisely role-models. And while the stories are admittedly aimed straight at boys, girls are not immune to the charms of the feechies either. Though they might not consider them charming.