The Remnant Society

The cousins have a photograph of three young men at a river in Kenya, and one of them has been scratched down to the paper. Determined to give Sonny Sharpe his face back, they take the picture to Brent and Jenna's father, who can sharpen almost anything, and learn the hardest truth of the hunt: some things a man destroys are gone for good. But Papa Harry left a mark of his own on the back of that photo, and it leads them to the water, and to the next page of a story someone spent a lifetime trying to drown.“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”John 3:5 (KJV)www.pathstoglory.com

A single name, written in Papa Harry's own hand in the margin of his Bible, leads the six cousins to the last person alive who was there in the beginning — a ninety-year-old woman who loved Harry, remembers the church he gave away, and has been keeping something for him for longer than the cousins have been alive. The trail stops being paper and becomes a person. And for the first time, someone who was there says out loud that Harry's best friend came home from Kenya changed.“The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.”Proverbs 10:7 (KJV)www.pathstoglory.com

Back at the little church Papa Harry built with his own hands, the six cousins pry loose the second piece of the torn journal and finally meet the man behind the legend — not a saint born holy, but a soldier who ran from God as far as a boat would carry him, all the way to Kenya, and was undone the night the Holy Ghost began to pour out. This is who Harry was. And after this, the Society stops being a game.“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.”Psalm 139:7–8 (KJV)www.pathstoglory.com

A car sits too long outside Nana's house with its lights off, and just like that the hunt stops being a game. Following Papa Harry's trail to the little crossing church he helped raise, the six cousins come face to face with the polite stranger who's been calling the family — and learn he got to the church before they did. With a retired sheriff's hard-won wisdom and a tired country pastor's help, they have to decide how you keep chasing the truth when the truth is being watched.“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”Matthew 10:16 (KJV)www.pathstoglory.com

At dawn the six cousins drive out to the old Sikes home place to dig up the first piece of Papa Harry's torn journal — and find they aren't the first ones to come looking. With help from a retired sheriff who knew Harry better than they did, they finally learn the truth the family had wrong for years: Papa Harry was never a missionary. He crossed an ocean to Kenya as a worker, a teacher, a soul winner — and the first recovered pages show them exactly who he was.Anchor verse: Proverbs 11:30 (KJV)www.pathstoglory.com

The trunk is open — and the most important thing Harry Sikes ever wrote is missing. What the six cousins find inside isn't a book; it's the hollow cover of one, its pages torn out and scattered, with a single card in their great-grandfather's hand pointing them toward the first piece. Their first real case as the Remnant Society: where do you start looking for something a man hid on purpose — and why is someone else already asking the family what they've found?www.pathstoglory.com

Six cousins come home from their great-grandfather's funeral to a letter he wrote before he died — one that names them, quotes an old verse over them, and hands them a locked trunk with no key. Harry Sikes spent his last years hiding something, and now he's asking the six of them to find it together. The Remnant Society begins where every good mystery does: with a door that won't open, and one clue nobody else noticed.www.pathstoglory.com