About Evan
Evan Drake Howard discovered his love of literature and writing in high school on the island of Guam. He then nurtured and expanded this love as an English major in college. He agrees with the French novelist André Maurois that the need to write arises from an unresolved inner conflict. Writing is not a method for ending the conflict, but rather a way to deepen and broaden one’s awareness of it. In this expanded awareness lies the possibility of deeper understanding.
Evan’s stories encompass darkness as well as light, doubt as well as faith, the masculine as well as the feminine dimensions in each person. He writes not to eliminate these opposites, but to illuminate the path toward integration. To embrace this path and point others to it is the ongoing challenge of his life.
Evan’s writing often takes him to the solitude of monasteries and retreat centers near the ocean. He feels at home there partly because he grew up exploring windswept beaches, breathing salty air, and hearing the rhythm of breaking waves. His earliest memories are of Bellingham, Washington, located on Puget Sound, near the Canadian border, where it stays light until 10 p.m. in the summer, and the scents of pine and cedar mix with fresh ocean breezes.
Until the age of seven, he lived on a twelve-acre farm outside the city. When his parents eventually bought a motel in town, he met a wide array of guests with intriguing stories to tell. The next move was to Everett, also on Puget Sound, an hour north of Seattle, where his maternal grandmother lived. (While growing up, Evan moved eleven times in eighteen years; his father was an electrician always in search of a better job.) At Meridian Junior High in Kent, Washington, he encountered Shakespeare and read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird instead of paying attention in Math class. He also discovered how much he enjoyed writing long passages in his friends’ yearbooks.
By the time he entered high school, he was living with his family on Guam, in the western Pacific, where his father had taken a civil service job with the Navy. Along with running cross country, playing basketball and football, and working as a lifeguard, Evan had formative reading experiences with All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
After graduation, he returned to the mainland U.S. and attended Everett Community College and the University of Washington, where he majored in English and History. These educational experiences exposed him to the great works of Chaucer, Milton, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Faulkner, Conrad, Melville, and many other master storytellers.
During these years Evan became involved in the ministry of the First Baptist Church of Everett and experienced a call to the Christian ministry. Through the generosity of this loving congregation, he was able to attend Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, where he met his wife, Carol. They married in 1978, and upon his graduation in 1980, he accepted a call to become pastor of the First Baptist Church of Cambridge, Massachusetts. During these years he worked on his Th.D. at Boston University School of Theology, completing the degree in 1988. He has served as pastor of the Community Church of Providence, Rhode Island, since September of that year. During this pastorate, he has written the nonfiction books Rekindling the Hope of the Manger, From Sacrifice to Celebration, Centered in God, and Suffering Loss, Seeking Healing.
He began writing fiction as a way to wrestle with issues of faith in a more imaginative way. His work incorporates the classical themes of the Christian spiritual life, but also draws insights from depth psychology, contemporary biblical and theological studies, and the mystical traditions of world religions.
The Lost Epistle of Jesus originated with Evan’s lifelong fascination with the "good thief" on the cross. He wondered what prior events may have influenced the thief’s dramatic repentance. Connecting the thief’s story to a fictional epistle written by Jesus of Nazareth became a vehicle for spiritual and theological reflection.
Evan and Carol are the parents of two sons, Evanjohn and Peter. Along with his pastoring and writing, Evan derives great joy from transporting his boys to school, making them meals, helping with their homework, and being involved with their sports, music, and many other activities.