The Mustard Tree

The minister’s son was never meant to lose his faith. Determined to step out from beneath his father’s shadow, Kris walks away from the religion that shaped his childhood and gathers a small band of friends in a crumbling old farmhouse. What begins as an experiment in shared living—radical honesty, stripped-back belief, and a bold new philosophy—soon attracts attention. When Kris enters local politics and appears on television arguing that you can be an atheist and still be a Christian, fascination turns to suspicion. Rumours spread and the commune soon becomes known as a cult.

Then a young paperboy disappears. With devastating consequences the missing boy is discovered in one of the farm’s outbuildings, and Kris finds himself accused of the ultimate crime—paedophilia and murder. Amid media frenzy and public outrage, friendships are tested, and a father has to confront the possibility that everything he believes about sin, redemption, and his own son may be wrong. But the outcome proves to be more transformative than anyone expects.

A gripping and provocative story about belief, identity, and the cost of standing against the crowd, this novel poses a pertinent question: what if faith doesn’t need to be what we think it is?