Project Person // Profile #13

_{Subscribe here to receive Project Person each Friday morning.}

Meet Charles Martin // Project Person #13

I’ve written a dozen profiles so far, highlighting “project people” that are close to me: my dear friends, brother, business partner, mother-in-law. Today’s post is different, though, as I’m highlighting someone who has influenced me from afar, without even knowing. Until just a few weeks ago, when I got to tell him…

I recently asked one of my literary-world friends if he knew Charles Martin.

He texted me Charles’ contact card in response.

I laughed out loud when it came through. ⭐️ Charles Martin ⭐️ was no longer just a name on a book’s cover. He was a human—with contact information!

He was also the novelist that redeemed fiction for me, transforming reading from something I did just to pass a high school class to something I did for enjoyment—or even enlightenment. 

My aunt Trisha, who always gifted us books at Christmas, gave me some Charles Martin books when I was in college. They read like Nicholas Sparks, but with depth: love stories where the Southern settings acted almost like a character themselves, where the broken character was made whole, where the end was always redemptive—even if it broke your heart in the process. 

They were also the first books I read that made me wonder about the author, as I could tell there were deep lessons embedded behind the words. What had he experienced? What did he want me, the reader, to experience? 

For the first time, I saw fiction as a vehicle for transformation. 

That’s when I began to love reading, and I devoured Charles’ books and anything similar. Books with soul, I called them. And when I decided to write my own, I knew that’s what I wanted to pursue: a piece of fiction that swept you away but that changed your thinking in the process. 

So, when publishing became a possibility, I wanted to talk to My Friend Charles. 

Would I email him? Call or text?! I opened up the contact card and laughed again. 

It was just his home address. 

So, I mailed him a letter. 

And a few weeks later, he texted me. “Hey Callie, this is Charles Martin. I got your letter.” He thoughtfully answered my questions, and we had a long call just yesterday where I got to interview him about his newest book—The Keeper, releasing April 1. 

And, like his books, there was a story beneath the story. 

Charles started writing at fifteen, when he was navigating the pulls of “sports, grades, girls, and hormones.” He had a hard time making sense of it all, saying he didn’t have the tools to talk about his feelings. But for reasons he has yet to understand, one day he sat down and wrote a short story, and after finishing those four or five pages, he felt like he took his first deep breath. 

He’s published eighteen novels since. 

His first five books were with a smaller publisher and did moderately well, but he began to wonder if he could compete with the best. “I wanted to play with the Yankees,” he said. “Just to see if I could.”

Inspired by a quote from John Milton’s speech Areopagitica—“let truth and falsehood grapple”—he decided to give it his best shot and let it settle where it may. 

Charles, his wife Christy, and his agent Chris decided to “pitch New York”. They made a list of their top 28 publishers and were shocked when the #1 name called them back. In an author’s absolute dream scenario, his next book went to auction with three of the biggest publishing houses, and he signed a deal with Random House. 

That book, Where the River Ends, was a New York Times Bestseller. And his next book, The Mountain Between Us, landed him with a Fox movie deal—Kate Winslet and Idris Elba as stars. 

He published a few more books with that publisher, but the wrestling didn’t let up. In fact, it continued. “New York didn’t know what to do with me and Jesus,” he said. 

Charles’ books were never overtly Christian—no Biblical characters, salvation moments, nor rigid morality—but they were redemptive, hopeful, and following the often upside-down teachings of Jesus that had been deeply impactful to his own life. 

He eventually made the move back to his original publisher, where he published a number of other books, including some non-fiction titles and collaborations. And then he wrote the Murphy Shepherd series.

Aunt Trisha texted me when the first book released. “This is so different! Have you read it?” 

The cover was classic Charles Martin—a Southern waterway with jewel-toned skies—but the blurb on the back was a sharp turn from his lyrical love stories. This book read more like a Grisham or Brad Thor military drama. 

“Where in the world did this series come from?” I got to ask him. 

I never expected his answer to be so close to home. 

A few years ago, Charles was on a book tour in Lawrenceville, Georgia, the town just next to mine. 

His publisher had reserved a motel they would not have chosen if they had seen it in person. As Charles walked to his room, a man in a Jaguar pulled into the empty parking lot. Charles’ memories of the events that followed are vivid: the sun glinting off the man’s wedding band, the way he blocked Charles on the balcony, the sickening proposition. 

“I’ve paid for some time with these girls,” the man said. “Sometimes they like to have somebody join us, and sometimes they like to have somebody watch. Are you interested?”

Charles wanted to punch him. He shook his head and went to his room, but then he watched through the windows as a Mustang dropped off two young ladies. They entered the man’s motel, and 45 minutes later, the Mustang returned to pick them up. 

Charles attended the book tour event that evening unable to think about anything but what he had just witnessed. He was so bothered, in fact, that he told the attendees what had happened. 

The owner of the bookstore, Bryan, happened to be on the board of a non-profit that fights human trafficking like this. In fact, they had rescued a number of girls from the very motel in which Charles was staying. 

The bookstore was called Liberty Books, and its website says: 

Human trafficking is modern-day slavery. It has reached epidemic levels globally, and Metro Atlanta has one of the worst trafficking problems in the United States.

Liberty Books realized it could not sit on the sidelines during this epic battle for freedom, and so we have been a financial supporter of effective ministries that fight trafficking in Atlanta for many years.

Bryan introduced Charles to this non-profit where men “of certain skills” track, find, and eliminate sex trafficking operations. 

And this is where the Murphy Shepherd series took shape. 

Charles wrote a three-book series—The Water Keeper, The Letter Keeper, and The Record Keeper—in what one reviewer deemed “a multilayered story woven together with grace and redemption, and packed tight with tension and achingly real characters.”

As my husband and I read those novels, we continually said out loud, “Could this actually be happening today?” 

Charles confirmed that, devastatingly, it was. 

In fact, he said he constantly wrestled with sharing an honest portrayal of modern-day slavery while not completely overwhelming his readers. How could he craft an engrossing story while also opening eyes to something seemingly unimaginable? 

I’d say he found the balance. The books have resonated with groups Charles never imagined. An Army chaplain, for instance, said he gives this series to his men on deployment, as the stories have helped them grapple with the horrors they face and fight. 

“There are people out there who are really hoping someone kicks in the door and saves them,” Charles told me. 

This theme is central to this series: the paradox that sometimes the needs of one outweigh the needs of others. In fact, it’s the Parable of the Lost Sheep that inspired Murphy Shepherd’s last name.

This series also brought Charles back to the silver screen, but this time with a few lessons learned. He and Christy decided not to sell the rights this time and to instead only pursue films if they became partners in telling the story. (Charles is currently co-writing the screenplay with Reserve Entertainment.) 

And there, working on film treatments for the first three books, he realized the story was not finished. Murphy had “left the 99 to find the one,” but there were still more to be rescued. 

So Charles wrote a fourth book, called The Keeper. 

He says it is the most satisfying thing he’s ever written. 

It will be released in just a few weeks. I asked him what it feels like to publish a book after doing this eighteen times prior (or thirty, if you include his non-fiction titles!), and to be honest, I was both encouraged and terrified by his answer. 

“I have not yet reached the place in my career that I hope and pray for,” he said. “It’s not that I’m not grateful, but I am a long way from getting to where I hope my books get.”

“But you’ve checked the NYT Bestseller box!” I reminded him. “What about Kate Winslet?!”

He doesn’t care about fame, he says, but he does want his stories—and the stories beneath those stories—in more hands.

Ambition wars with gratitude, purpose wars with capacity.

Truth and falsehood still grapple.  

This was an unexpected lesson for me, an emerging author. I look at Charles’ career and imagine basking in the freedom of confidence and accomplishment. He’s done it! I thought I would meet with this Author Hero of Mine and learn the tried-and-tested path to confidence and success. He’d tell me which publisher to choose, which deals to pursue, which stories to tell. 

But instead, he told me to wrestle. Even in response to the questions in my letter, his text reply encouraged me to “ask the Lord.”

And I realized this not-knowing is the ultimate tension we face—in both the arcs of our fictional characters and in the lives we get to live beyond the pages. 

It’s what makes Murphy Shepherd a character worthy of a series. His choices are not predictable. They are not safe.

Nor are the consequences.

We wrestle because there is no sure-fire path, no definite outcome, no playbook to a life without pain.

We wrestle because there’s always another reader to reach, life to change, door to knock down.

We wrestle because we—and those we love—are the lost being found, broken people being made whole. 

Stories being written.

And if we’re honest, it’s that wrestling that makes a story worth reading—or living.

…Especially when you trust the author.

-Callie

The weeks leading up to a book release are crucial! Pre-orders tell the printers how many copies to print, encourage bookshops and Amazon to purchase more, and count towards those “best seller lists” numbers.

You can pre-order The Keeper here.

🪩 Meet Your Fellow Email Subscribers 🪩

Meet Chantel Adams, who started Mission Driven Women with the intention of coming alongside the educated, well-connected women she knew who were struggling to communicate their value in a world that de-values motherhood. “These amazing women told themselves that duty called and then expressed regret over the talent and skills that suddenly seemed dormant, if not dead,” she says. She sends these incredible weekly emails titled Five Things Keeping Me on Mission.

Next week, I’ll share a pretty big publishing update and what I’ve learned in the process. Stay tuned!