Ella Rose Becker

“They say when you fall in love, someone steals your heart. But Jesus, you gave me yours. And I just want to carry your heart with everything I say, do, feel, or think.”

It was the February of her senior year of high school, and Ella Rose Becker was in the grips of a love she had never thought possible. It had been a dark season of loneliness and melancholy, and Light was shining through. Jesus was carrying her.

It wasn’t long before she began a book she described in her prayers as a love song to her Savior. A book where she told herself the Truth in story form of who Jesus was, who He is. A gentle Savior who carries His children in His tender arms. Through that book, healing came.

Her writing journey began with a childhood full of books: The Bunny of Bluebell Hill, The Horse and His Boy, and Anne of Green Gables. Through a rigorous classical homeschool education in the heart of South Carolina, Ella Rose was exposed to thousands of books and captured by a love for learning. Her passion for theology began in the church at a young age, maturing in high school as she took formative classes in the subject. Snuggled in the in-between place of sleep and wakefulness, she grew up telling herself nightly stories of orphans and families, ships and ballerinas.

It wasn’t until a week at the beach the summer before high school complete with an ear infection, several volumes of Jane Austen, and way too much sweet tea that her stories began to take consistent written form. Over the course of high school, she ground out four and a half increasingly improving manuscripts. Then, as winter hinted at spring, the magical happened: The Gentle Shepherd came.

What started as a fifteen thousand word short story grew into her first fully edited novel, a gift she would never have produced on her own. God gave her that story, but not just for her. Ella Rose grew increasingly confident that this book was meant to be shared to a world starved for the love of Christ.

In his essay, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to… But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their true potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.” Ella Rose realized that The Gentle Shepherd was, for her, a way to steal past the watchful dragons in her own soul.

Not just The Gentle Shepherd, though. All of her books. As a girl who has seen and tasted of the depths and love of a mighty, risen Christ, she cannot help but share this word. Through her writing, the presence of the Lord peeks from every shadow, shines from every darkness. There is hope. Christ is risen, and He can be known at a depth most do not even consider possible. She seeks to share this message with the world.