The Direction

by Elisabeth Nadler

Book One in The Direction, a complete Christian Dystopian Series
(Re-edited for grammatical September 2025. If the copyright page on your device does not say " September 2025", you may need to have Amazon 'push' the updated version to your device.)

Devastated by a massive depletion in earth's population in the 21st and 22nd centuries, society crumbles and governments fall apart. That's when an NGO called The Direction steps in to save humanity. With DNA analyses they have selected the best subjects for re-population, and in the early 23rd century The Direction controls small communities in what was once known as Colorado. With the help of APA, an artificial intelligence governing system, diet and lifestyle habits are monitored, printed material has been eliminated, connections to any society remaining in other countries has been severed, and religion has been banned.

With no one to marry, 25 year old Lila Collins is about to lose her place in her community as she is scheduled to be relocated to a surrogacy facility. Meanwhile, Major Don Bachman is a highly decorated officer in The Direction’s Defense Industry, but when he sees the transfer orders for Lila, he decides to risk his position to save her.

Bitter about the loss of her dad and her friends who went against The Direction and embraced Christianity, Lila struggles with anger toward God as she escapes her fate with Don and joins a team of rebel soldiers as their combat medic. Guided by their confident, prayerful leader, they have one Bring down The Direction.

Can they uncover and interrupt The Direction's insidious plans? Can Lila and the team navigate through devastating losses, crippling fear, and an evil organization hellbent on killing them all, to discover God's will and find peace and love in a dystopian world?

Can they find their direction?

402 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 21, 2024

About the author

Elisabeth is an award winning author who lives off-grid in rural western South Dakota as a stay-at-home wife and a mom of four home-schooled children. In her spare time, she loves writing books that have God, action, adventure, spiritual warfare, and characters that struggle at times but always find faith!
She also loves to design her own book covers, proof read with her daughter, and make her husband lose an entire day reading one of her books.

Reviews

[Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Kindle) I genuinely enjoyed this dystopian story. It reminds us to pray fervently and trust in God's plan. I appreciate how true to reality it is - making known that vaccines contain aborted fetal cells and can cause a lot of harm to a body, including miscarriage and mutated genetics. Bold move by the author, well done. There were a few minor things that didn't make sense -- the story mentions that fewer and fewer men were being born, thanks to fragile Y chromosome... yet, the books characters are predominantly male. There seemed to be no shortage of men throughout the story, so why bring up the lack of them at all? A warning? I was also confused by 2 things during Lila's mission to gather info. She says she dropped the chip in a planter near the elevator so she wouldn't have it on her person when she is checked. But she never goes back for it - yet still hands it over to the team. Also during said body check, they conveniently forget to check her back pocket - leaving her with the metal cross. Apparently she could have just stuck the chip in her pocket and they wouldn't have found it!?!
This last critique is for the virtual voice reader - it was awful. As always. And I wish author's would not allow their books to be read by A.I. Record it yourselves, authors, you won't regret it. I would love to just READ all the books but I am a busy woman and audiobooks are my best bet for being able to "read" while still cooking, cleaning, and chauffeuring my family around. The virtual voice is so bad though...it doesn't have different tones for different characters. It doesn't understand how punctuation changes pronunciation. If you have the time to sit and read - read this book!!

[Tiffany Matteson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Read

I think teens and adults would enjoy this book. It fits the dystopian fiction genre and has strong Christian themes. The characters have flaws and are building their relationships with each other and God throughout. It is fast paced with lots of action.

[Courtney Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good Dystopian novel

I love the idea of this book it had a good story line it was just a little slow for me but I really enjoyed it!

[Taylor McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to enjoy this, but it’s hard to get past the abundant syntax errors. 🙁

[Ashley Korn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book was good, but wish there was more build up of the romance through out the book. I did love the whispered conversations between characters and God though. However, when I finished, I had no desire to read the next book. 😬

[Taco · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love it

The story plot sounded great, but I found it hard to sink into the story. I liked the characters but felt some fluidity was missing.