My very first book just came out! You can purchase this amazing piece of literature in print at Create Space or for the Kindle at Amazon

Check out the amazing cover created by the great Jamie Winter Dawson.

Some praise for The Other Side of Silence –

“In the gritty reality of modern Minneapolis, seven individuals struggle through obstacles as unique as they are universally human. In a world like ours, where families are broken, energy seeps away, judgment is passed and children wander, can there really be a presence on the other side of silence that cares about human struggle, let alone intervenes? Lauren Martinez Catlin’s debut novel The Other Side of Silence paints a world with poignant prose that glimmers with hope and grace out of the corner of your eye. The individual threads of story Lauren has captured weave a reality that acknowledges darkness, but speaks of an interconnectedness that catches and encompasses everyone. We all carry a piece of God within ourselves and contain the capacity to be the instrument of compassion that changes someone’s life. Ordinary humans are employed as angels to act on behalf of each other through deceptively ordinary acts in a cycle that omits no one and uplifts us all. In the space of a moment, lives touch in the palm of God.” – Heidi Alford, young adult fiction author

“The Other Side of Silence” explores faith, but doesn’t sugarcoat or mythologize it; instead, it’s a story about regular people coming into contact with something transcendent, a story about the God that exists inside every moment of clarity, embrace with a loved one or decision to keep fighting. The novel is heart-warmingly optimistic, but it also pulls no punches; while humanity’s goodness is on display here, that goodness is shining through a brutal, dark-and-dirty realism. Characters deal with racism, poverty, homophobia and oppressions of all kinds, and the sometimes suffocating bleakness only makes the novel’s various spiritual and emotional payoffs all the more satisfying. To top it all off, it’s written with supreme confidence and remarkable lyrical skill; this is an impressive, powerful debut novel.
–Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre, 2-time National Poetry Slam champion

“Several of the chapters are among the most engrossing I’ve read. I couldn’t put the book down until the wee hours on the second night I was reading it, despite my need for sleep. I found many of the scenes deeply compelling, as if they were communicating a truth I didn’t yet understand, but could absorb by finishing the chapter… and the next one… and the next one. The story about one young man’s journey through the discovery of a same-sex attraction and the resulting fall-out with his family and faith community was as true as anything I’ve read, and manages to escape the cliches of the right or left and create a connection to the reader that feels familiar if you’ve had friends in a similar situation.” – Peter Benedict, pastor at River Heights Vineyard Church