🏆 Nominated for a 2025 CRT Award in the Christian Fiction category.

An ancient stained-glass window . . . A medieval manuscript rediscovered after centuries hidden away . . .

It is November 1996. Adam stands bathed in the window’s fractured radiance where Alwin, a novice monk, had stood 1,400 years before him.

As his own world unravels, Adam finds himself inexplicably but irresistibly drawn to the enigmatic Lucy. Does she hold the key to the mystery—and the courage to embrace where it will lead? Alwin must also test the affections of his heart as he accompanies his Abbot, Benedict Biscop, on the perilous journey from seventh-century Jarrow to Rome.

Though separated by over a millennium, their stories become strangely intertwined through the words they share. From the broken but beautiful fragments of art and life, can they begin to piece together the truth that will set them free?

Drawing on the rich spiritual and cultural heritage of North East England, Broken Light is a powerful story of the timeless search for meaning, hope and love, set against the sea-haunted backdrop of Northumbria.

Jennifer Denning was born in 1976 and studied English Literature at York University before training as an English teacher at Cambridge University. She moved to Durham in 1999 for her first teaching job where she met and married her husband John. They live in Durham and have four children.

BROKEN LIGHT is a tightly structured novel that is deeply rooted in the Christian tradition of the Venerable Bede and St Augustine of Hippo. It is intended to engage and persuade those who might be looking for meaning in a dark and frightening world. Like many spiritual writings of the Church, it takes the salvation of one human soul and asks the reader to see in that one rescue the whole human condition and our own personal relationship with Jesus.

. . . a brave and engaging book, which is full of ideas and moments of beauty. It would be the source of rich and inspiring disagreement in book groups, because some people will love it, while others will find that the allegory, the structure, and the love of ideas is too heavy a weight for the story and the characters quite to carry.

Church Times