ART & HUMANITY FRAMED IN THE PHOTOFEATURE STORY: Analysis of CHICKEN CROSSING by Kristen Joy Wilks. “From a Goat to a Found Sheep”

TOP: Full Jacket Cover of CHICKEN CROSSING. MIDDLE: Kristen Joy Wilks with Gwen and Drizzit. April of 2022. BOTTOM: Gwen and Drizzit. Copyright by Kristen Joy Wilks.

The adult novel Chicken Crossing, which is a companion to Kristen Joy Wilks’ children’s book Dandelion Floofums, is one book loaded in every conflict possible: spiritual love and conflict between person and God; love story and conflict between the hero and heroine; love story and conflict between humanity and animals; conflict between man and nature; inner conflict.  It is also a novel of suspense and slapstick comedy.

Click on the below link to purchase Dandelion Floofums from Amazon

       Liberian Shelby Luanne Wilson lives by her color-coded lists that she makes about every aspect of her life, from what she will bake to what kind of husband she wants to have.  She is also an animal lover and very impetuous which gets her into diverse troubles. Shelby is also convinced that her family and friends need animals as pets, even when her loved ones insist they do not want any pets.

       Thus the story begins – Shelby at a pet store looking at the most adorable hairy and baby rats that she is convinced her friend Brianna, whose children are allergic to dogs, will appreciate. Shelby is happy how her day goes until the happy-go-lucky youth pastor Jack Sullivan keeps calling her cell phone which she refuses to answer.

       Once she baked her cookies, she then begins to bake her casserole dish, only to realize her rats have escape the so-called escape proof box.  She finally finds the rates, just as her bread sticks are finished in the oven.  She places the rats in her cookie jar and heads off to Brianna’s house.

       Her phone rings and it is Jack’s tenth time to call her for that one day. She finally decides to answer the phone, but soon regrets it. Jack wants a big favor –his sister is moving to a new home and he needs Shelby to go to his sister’s old house, gather all the fifteen chickens onto her 1960s Studebaker trailer called “Old Blue” and drive them to the upper pass where Jack is stuck along with a vehicle that refuses to work.  The 15 chickens belong to his nephew Jonathan and Jonathan’s favorite chicken is Dandelion Floofums.  She manages to do the job just fine until she loses Dandelion Floofums.  And to make matters worse her sister Monica wants Shelby to watch her 10-year-old daughter Avery.

       She and Avery drive Old Blue carrying all the fifteen chickens to meet Jack at the top of the pass only to crash into his moving truck and to find all of the chickens in the process of escaping.

       Now Shelby, Avery, and Jack are on a journey to recover all of the 15 chickens. The three begin their journey on top of the road but end up in the forest chasing after 15 chickens. They encounter another coup of chickens that look identical to theirs.  The identical chickens are near a cabin with a sign NO TRESPASSING VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT and a large ax imbedded in a round of wood.

       Shelby gulped down a fortifying breath and crept forward, leaving Jack behind.  Just because every single scary movie with a forest setting included foolish women stumbling upon a creepy cabin in the dark, did not mean that a chainsaw wielding madman waited therein.  Such films were pretend, and badly written, and why-oh-why had she and Monica’s one teenage rebellion been renting terrifying movies to watch together while their parents thought they were enjoying stirring tales about misunderstood racehorses and frolicking wildlife?

Page 67

       After two hours of searching the three finally find all of the fifteen chickens and are proud to present Jonathan his cherished chickens.  Jonathan inspects every chicken, his heart content, until he comes to the last chicken.

       “These fourteen hens are mine.  But I’ve never seen this chicken before in my life and . . . Dandelion Floofums is gone!”

Page 86

       The three – Shelby, Jack, and Avery – are back in Old Blue searching for Dandelion Floofums.  In the process clumsy Shelby has one of her accidents in the forest: this time she stumbles over a sleeping bag, only to realize it is not empty but inhabited by a giant of a man; then another giant removes himself from another sleeping bag; and then another one from a tent that she happened to stumble over as well.

       And things only get worse when Avery is missing.  This is no longer a funny story about chickens but what it means to love, to be loved, and more important to be what God called us Christians to be:  a found sheep.

       Oh, God.  You said we are Your sheep.  Anyway, they say sheep truly need a shepherd or they literally fall off cliffs or try or get a drink, fall in, have their wool get waterlogged and then drown in only a few inches of water.

       You know my secret.  I’ve always considered myself more of a goat.  Capable, smart, savvy, able to clamber on top of small cars and escape any fence . . . but I know how You separate the sheep from the goat.  The ones who are Yours from the ones who want to be their own boss.

       I see it now.  I’m a sheep who just dressed up like a goat because I thought I could do it alone.

Page 121

Click on the below link to visit Kristen Joy Wilks’s website

Click on the below link to purchase CHICKEN CROSSING from Amazon.

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