Meadow Rue Merrill wins Christopher Award for “Redeeming Ruth”

Maine-based author and award-winning journalist Meadow Rue Merrill has won a Christopher Award for Redeeming Ruth: Everything Life Takes, Love Restores, (Hendrickson Publishers), a book that takes place largely in Bath, Maine and in Uganda. It is one of 12 books for adults and young people by 19 authors and illustrators to be celebrated on May 17, 2018 at the 69^th annual Christopher Awards in New York along with the writers, producers and directors of 9 feature films and TV/Cable programs. A journalist in The Pine Tree State for more than 20 years, Merrill and her family still live north of Portland.

“Ruth, who my book is about, was a student at the Maine Educational Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Falmouth, Dike-Newell Elementary school in Bath, the Morrison Center (now in Scarborough), and Hear Me Now in New Gloucester, without which she would never have reached her full potential,” said Merrill. “My daughter’s wheelchair was her legs, her computer was her voice.

“She was more than just our daughter; she was an ambassador, who opened our hearts to the needs of children with disabilities in the developing world. We miss Ruth every day, but we wouldn't trade one day we had with her for the world.”

Born in Uganda and abandoned at birth, Ruth had severe disabilities. Would Merrill and her husband, who already had two boys and a girl, adopt her? That was the question God seemed to be asking. The answer would stretch their faith, test their endurance, and bring them more joy than they’d ever imagined. It would also break their hearts and open them to other abandoned children and people with disabilities.All of the royalties from Ruth's book support orphans and children with disabilities in Uganda.

Merrill has worked as a reporter for The Times Record, in Brunswick, Maine, The Boston Globe, and Down East magazine, has published parenting essays in The New York Times, written for Harvard University, and contributed feature articles to The Boston Sunday Globe Magazine. She also regularly writes about faith for The Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest newspaper. “The Christmas Cradle,” the first-volume of her forthcoming Lantern Hill Farm picture-book series releases with RoseKidz publishers this fall.

The Christopher Awards were created in 1949 to celebrate authors, illustrators, writers, producers and directors whose work “affirms the highest values of the human spirit.” The Christophers, a nonprofit organization founded in 1945 by Maryknoll Father James Keller, is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition of service to God and humanity. The ancient Chinese proverb—“It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness”— guides its publishing, radio, and awards programs. More information about The Christophers is available at www.christophers.org.