Sixteen year-old Matt Benson moves with Robert, his widowed father, to Boaz, Alabama for one year for Robert to conduct research on Southern Baptist Fundamentalism. Robert, a professsor of Bible History and New Testament Theology at the University of Chicago's Divinity School, enlists Matt to assist him as an undercover agent at First Baptist Church of Christ. Matt's job is to befriend the most active young person in the Church's youth group, and learn the heart and mind of teenagers growing up as Fundamental Southern Baptists.Olivia Tillman is the fifteen year old daughter of Walter Tillman, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Christ. Robert and Matt move to Boaz in July 1970, and before school begins in mid-August, Matt and Olivia become fast friends. Olivia's life is centered around her faith, her family, and her friends. She is struck with Matt and his doubts and vows to win him to Christ. Over the next year, Matt and Olivia's relationship blossoms into more than a teenage romance, despite their different religious beliefs. June 1971 and Matt's return to Chicago comes too quickly, but the two vow to never lose what they have, even promising to reunite at college in two years after Olivia graduates from high school.Girl and God is told from the perspective of past and present. The story alternates between 1970-1971, and 2017. After Matt left Boaz in June 1971, life happened and Olivia and Matt's plans fell apart. However, in December 2017, their lives crossed again, almost miraculously, and they have almost a month in Boaz to catch up on forty-six years of being apart, and to discover whether their teenage love can be rekindled and transformed into an older adult romance. In 2017, Olivia and Matt are quick to learn they are vastly different than when they were sixteen and fifteen years old, especially, when it comes to religion and faith. Will these religious differences unite them? The real issue is the secret Olivia has kept. Will Matt's discovery destroy any chance he and Olivia have of rekindling their teenage relationship?
About the Author: Richard L. Fricks has always liked a challenge. This may be why he has always been the discontented type. Of course, it may be just the opposite. Either way, Richard has tried many things over the years. Outside his 30 years spent in two professions, accounting and law, he built a few spec houses, and bought and sold other real estate as an investor, sold real estate as an agent, sold insurance as an agent, and sold livestock feed. Richard also has owned and operated two hog farms, a meat-processing facility, and a barbecue restaurant. Lest we forget, in 2007 and 2008, Richard earned his private pilot's license and instrument rating. In 2010, with the help of his two sons, he built a 1,300-foot grass runway at Hickory Hollow, their eighty-acre private oasis in the backwoods of North Etowah County, Alabama. Over most of these years, Richard was seeking meaning and purpose. Then finally, a few years ago, he had his Damascus Road experience, and realized that meaning and purpose don't come from the outside. They come from within. At this point, Richard knew he had to create his own meaning. He now finds real meaning and purpose in his fiction writing. Richard published his first novel, God and Girl, in 2016. This was the culmination of a twenty-two-year journey that began in Law School in 1994. Richard's second novel, The Boaz Scorekeeper, was written and published in 2017. The Boaz Secrets, originally titled Girl and God before publishing, was almost an afterthought, but arose from Richard's last-minute decision to participate in the National Novel Writing Month's creative writing project during November 2017 (God and Girl was a 2015 product of this same project). Richard's fourth novel, The Boaz Stenographer, should be available in late February 2018. The author hopes to write many more stories about myths, mysteries, and murders set in and around his hometown of Boaz, Alabama. Richard says, "I've always liked a challenge. Fiction writing is the biggest one so far."