For Reviewers & Press
Everything you need to write about Radical Trust: The Story As Misha Saw It — the debut novel from Radical Provision Ministries, launching November 2026. Story summary, review angles, comparable titles, and a direct line to the author.
Radical Trust: The Story As Misha Saw It
Book 1 of the A Radical God series · by Michael J. Rainwater
Nov 2026
Release
8–12
Age Range (reads up)
30
Chapters
61,000
Words
Story + Devotional
Format, Every Chapter
NASB 2020
Scripture Translation
5.5 × 8.5
Trim Size
$15.99 / $9.99
Paperback / Ebook
The Greatest Rescue Story Ever Told — As Witnessed By A Dog
The rains are coming. The village has no idea. And Misha — a loyal border collie who has spent her life at the feet of the strangest man in the valley — is about to discover what it costs to trust a God she cannot see.
Radical Trust tells the story of Noah's flood through the eyes of his dog. From the moment she hears the hammers strike the first cedar beam to the morning she watches a rainbow arch across a washed-clean sky, Misha bears witness to one of history's most radical acts of faith. This is not a children's board book. The water is real. The waiting is real. The doubt is real. And the God who closes the door is the same God who opens the sky.
Each of the 30 chapters pairs a story section — told in Misha's voice — with a devotional section built around a key scripture, a reflection, a discussion question, and a prayer prompt. It works as a novel, a family read-aloud, a homeschool resource, and a church small-group study for families.
“I am Misha, and I saw the end of the world. But more than that, I saw the Heart of the One who made it new again. The promise was for all of us.”
Misha · closing line, Radical Trust
Songs From Radical Trust — A Companion EP
Four original songs written for the book and sung by its characters — led by Lemara, the Raven, Shara the dove, and Noah himself. The EP releases alongside the book and streams on 24 platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and Deezer.
Listen to the Full EP →Written For Children. Built For The Whole Family.
Radical Trust is shelved as middle-grade fiction, ages 8–12 — but it's written so a parent reading it aloud gets as much out of it as the child listening. Here's what makes it work for both audiences at once:
The flood costs Noah his neighbors, his reputation, and his world. Later, he gets drunk and is shamed by his own son. These beats are in the biblical text, and they're in this book, handled with age-appropriate gravity but without sanitizing. Preteens who've faced real difficulty trust a story precisely because it doesn't pretend the world is easier than it is — and adults get a retelling that doesn't flatten the source material into a nursery version.
Each of the 30 chapters closes with a key verse (NASB 2020), a reflection, a discussion question, and a prayer prompt. That turns a bedtime story into a shared spiritual practice — five minutes of narrative fiction followed by five minutes of family conversation about the same idea.
Animal narrators in the series refer to God only as Hashem — Hebrew for "The Name" — because animals exist outside the covenant community and wouldn't know the revealed name. It's a small worldbuilding choice with real scholarship behind it: young readers absorb it as wonder, and readers who know the Hebrew Bible will recognize exactly what's being signaled.
Misha doesn't believe because she's worked through a doctrinal argument. She trusts because she's watched Noah trust, and because she was inside the closed door and survived. That's how faith actually forms for most people — which makes her arc as relevant to an adult rebuilding trust after a hard year as it is to a ten-year-old hearing the story for the first time.
Angles Worth Writing About
- A faith-forward answer to secular animal-narrator fiction — the same literary voice as The One and Only Ivan, aimed at readers whose families want the story to be explicitly Christian.
- The book's refusal to sanitize Noah: his drunkenness and Ham's sin stay in the story, making the point that no human hero is strong enough to save anyone on his own — only God is.
- A three-in-one reading experience — novel, family devotional, and small-group study guide — in a single book, without a separate companion guide to buy.
- Book 1 of a planned 13-book series retelling major biblical narratives through the eyes of an animal who was there.
Comparable Titles
| Title | Author | Why It's Comparable |
|---|---|---|
| The One and Only Ivan | Katherine Applegate | First-person animal narrator, literary voice, real crossover adult appeal — secular where Radical Trust is explicitly faith-based. |
| The Wingfeather Saga | Andrew Peterson | The clearest market parallel: serious, literary, explicitly Christian adventure fiction for ages 8–12 that doesn't write down to its audience. |
| The Chronicles of Narnia | C.S. Lewis | The gold standard for Christian fiction that works as literature — and the conviction that children deserve real theological weight. |
| Because of Winn-Dixie | Kate DiCamillo | A dog's faithful presence anchoring a story about human longing and community. |
| Shiloh | Phyllis Reynolds Naylor | A loyal dog narrator and a moral landscape that trusts preteen readers with hard questions. |
Radical Provision Ministries
Radical Trust is Book 1 of A Radical God, a planned 13-book series from Radical Provision Ministries retelling major biblical narratives through the eyes of an animal who was there. The ministry's namesake project, Radical Provision, is a separate three-volume adult Bible-study series exploring how God provides — currently in development, targeting 2027.
Michael J. Rainwater
Michael J. Rainwater is a Christian author and Bible teacher based in the Houston, Texas area. He serves as Senior Director of IT Delivery at Compassion International, where his work supports the organization's global mission to children in poverty. He studies Hebrew and Greek, draws on Jewish literary tradition and Midrash, and has taught the Bible in small group and church settings for many years. Radical Trust is his first novel.
Full biography and professional background at michaelrainwater.com.
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Cover Art & Author Photo
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