Friday Five Writers – Andrew Careaga

The subtitle of Faith-Ann Dalton‘s debut book In This House We Lived–“A Faith Journey of Choosing Life Again and Again”–is more than a play on her first name. The memoir, which comes out May 8, is a raw and moving account of this first-time author’s struggles to move from a harrowing childhood through an unplanned pregnancy and many other personal trials to establish a life centered around her faith in God and herself.

Cover image of Faith-Ann Dalton’s memoir, *In This House We Lived*. Image via Anointed Colony Media.

The publisher, Anointed Colony Media, describes In This House We Lived as “a raw, redemptive memoir of trauma, crisis, faith, and the slow, intentional construction of healthy habits. “

“With unflinching honesty and hard-won clarity, Dalton traces her story of becoming a mother before she was ready, learning to choose herself without abandoning her soul, and discovering that healing doesn’t always mean getting it right—it’s about refusing to give up.”

Now a licensed cosmetologist, married, and a mother of four, Faith-Ann lives in St. James, Missouri.

Read on to learn more about Faith-Ann and her memoir. But first, please read this disclaimer:

Radio plays have been around for a century or more, practically since the advent of radio. They thrived during the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s–an era sometimes called the Golden Age of Radio. In his latest novel, Count the Dust (LEFTOVER Books, December 2025), writer and literary magazine editor Adam Van Winkle taps into that approach to create a distinctive story designed for radio but equally enjoyable as a good read.

Count the Dust is set in a nameless small town in southern Oklahoma or north Texas. It’s modeled after the place where Adam grew up, Texoma, but, as he writes, it could be any of the “many small Oklahoma and Texas towns I’ve been in and through that center around a filling station on a state highway.” It’s a murder mystery, told over two time periods–1967, the year of the murder, and 1997–as well as a story of “the persistence of offspring in unideal circumstances.”

“These places, like places I grew up in and around, with little money, little resources, drugs, guns, violence, strained marriages and poisonous relationships, they still find a way to produce progeny. People still meet through the circumstance of life, new people still get born.”

Category: Friday Five Writers

Friday Five: Faith-Ann Dalton on her memoir of faith

Friday Five: Cowboy Jamboree’s Adam Van Winkle, author of ‘Count the Dust’