Coming June 24, 2026

A revelation shoots shockwaves . . .

In Surface’s sequel, can Matthew Goodman, Jonathan, Trish, & Andres find the courage and the love to do what they must do?

The Story Continues . . . 

Will the secret by uncovered?

Chicago: It’s July 7, 2007, when news about Matthew Goodman breaks. The 56-year-old spiritual leader is found in Lake Michigan. The megachurch pastor was floating a mile from shore—way beyond the safety ropes at Living Waters. Why? Will Pastor Goodman live? And why is Trish Card, Goodman’s executive assistant, nowhere to be found?

Youngest Goodman son, 30-year-old Jonathan, begins a long journey from Kenya, concerned but conflicted. How can Jonathan reenter the Calvary Community crowd, the community of his childhood that makes him so disillusioned and angry—and, worse, how can he reenter his family?

Andrés Huertas contends with his feelings for Trish while facing a painful question: How will he continue to love in a shattered and disheartening world?

As Matthew, Trish, Jonathan, and Andrés spin through confusion and pain, they grapple to know what to do. But there is something each has left to learn about love—only one small thing: how Love actually loves.

A Thousand Wings of Light, sequel to The Surface of Water (IVPress, 2024), is a contemporary novel that explores the holy work of redemption.

Compassionate and unflinching, Cynthia Beach earned my trust with The Surface of Water. In A Thousand Wings of Light, she goes deeper still. Her deft storytelling carried me through the underbelly of pastoral and institutional power gone awry into hard-won healing. From here on out, I’ll read everything this author writes.

—Cheryl Grey Bostrom, award-winner, What the River Keeps

Endorsements

A megachurch pastor. A father. An obedient, even sycophantic staff. A younger attractive woman. Relationships fouled. A suicide attempt. A story in the news. Survival. Who will narrate this story? How? Will the truth be told? Will the young woman be treated justly? Cynthia Beach creates the whirl and whorl with the elements of a story that mirrors the life of many churches, of many women in those churches, and, sadly, of far too many pastors. A Thousand Wings of Light, like the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Graham Greene, deserves a place in the canon of pastors whose true lives are not told.

—SCOT MCKNIGHT, author with Laura Barringer, A Church called Tov

I want more books like A Thousand Wings of Light. The story is propulsive, the writing beautiful, and the portrait it offers of the church is both honest and hopeful. A well-told story has the power to heal, and Cynthia Beach has told her story very well.

—CHRISTIE PURIFOY, author of A House to Call Home

A Thousand Wings of Light is a prophetic novel for our time. Cynthia Beach dares to step into the shadowed spaces of faith, power, and secrecy inside the church—not to condemn, but to reveal. With courage and compassion, she exposes the fractures beneath spiritual platforms and reminds us that truth, though painful, is always the beginning of healing. This story calls us to deeper integrity and to a faith refined by light, not protected by silence.

—ANDREW BAUMAN, author of Safe Church

Available Soon
Available Soon

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