Frank E. Peretti

Frank Edward Peretti (born January 13, 1951) is a New York Times best-selling author of Christian fiction, whose novels primarily focus on the supernatural and spiritual warfare. As of 2012, his works have sold over 15 million copies worldwide. He has been described by The New York Times as creating the Christian thriller genre. Peretti is best known for his novels This Present Darkness (1986) and Piercing the Darkness (1989). Peretti has held ministry credentials with the Assemblies of God, and formerly played the banjo in a bluegrass band called Northern Cross. He now lives in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, with his wife, Barbara.

Biography

Frank E. Peretti was born in Lethbridge in southern Alberta, Canada, but raised in Seattle, Washington, for most of his life. As a child, he had a cystic hygroma, a facial tumor which affected his ability to speak until later receiving surgery and speech therapy. He became a natural storyteller who regularly told monster stories to neighborhood children. After graduating from high school, he began playing banjo with a local bluegrass group. He married his wife, Barbara, in 1972. Later, he studied English, screen writing and film at UCLA, and assisted his father in pastoring a small Assembly of God church on Vashon Island from 1978 to 1983, also taking construction jobs to make ends meet. While working as a pastor, teaching children at church camps "rekindled his interest in storytelling".

Writing

Early work

After leaving pastoring and while working at a ski factory, Peretti wrote and published a well-received adventure story for children, The Door in the Dragon's Throat (1985). A year later, he published This Present Darkness (1986), his most famous and popular novel to date. It was initially rejected by fourteen publishers before being picked up by Crossway Books. Although This Present Darkness was not an immediate success, sales improved with word of mouth, particularly after singer Amy Grant promoted the book. Peretti also spoke at Christian music festivals. The book remained on the Christian Booksellers Association's top ten best-sellers list for over 150 consecutive weeks, and has as of 2013 sold over 2.7 million copies worldwide.

Peretti followed This Present Darkness with a sequel, Piercing the Darkness (1989), another tremendous success. Combined, This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness have sold 3.5 million copies as of 2012. As of 2021, This Present Darkness continues to sell approximately 8,000 copies per year.

Peretti also took the characters from his first work The Door in the Dragon's Throat and used them to write The Cooper Kids Adventure Series, releasing seven more titles that contained the same Indiana Jones–style adventures similar to The Door in the Dragon's Throat.

Throughout the 1990s, Peretti continued to write full-time, releasing Prophet (1992), The Oath (1995), and The Visitation (1999). The Oath, generally regarded as one of Peretti's greater works, has sold more than one million copies, and received the ECPA Gold Medallion Book Award for Best Fiction in 1996. The Visitation landed at #19 on The New York Times Best Seller list and was adapted into a film in 2006.

Later years

The turn of the millennium saw Peretti's departure from writing his popular novels. He wrote a 2000 memoir, The Wounded Spirit, which covered his struggles as a child with a facial tumor, which caused him to be mocked by other children and retreat to solitude until it was eventually treated with multiple surgeries. He dwelled on the subject of bullying in his non-fiction titles No More Victims (2001) and No More Bullies (2003).

In 2001, Peretti released Hangman's Curse, the first book in the Veritas Project series for teens. The book was an instant hit among both teens and adults, and was made into a low-budget 2003 film of the same name. The second book in the series, Nightmare Academy, was published in 2002 with equal success. The two books together sold more than 500,000 copies, according to Thomas Nelson Publishers. Peretti has mentioned that there may be more possible entries in the Veritas Project series.

Peretti's first full-length novel after 2000 was the 2005 thriller Monster, which played with the Bigfoot legend and explored issues surrounding the "survival of the fittest" and creationist-based objections to evolution. Monster hit The New York Times Best Seller list at #34 on its first week and rose to #29 on its second week.

In April 2006, Peretti and fellow supernatural author Ted Dekker co-authored the novel House. It received mixed reviews from Peretti and Dekker fans, but was popular enough to be adapted as the 2008 film House, starring Michael Madsen.

In April 2010, it was announced that Peretti had signed with Howard Books (a division of Simon & Schuster) for a new novel. The novel, Illusion, was published in March 2012.

Influence and themes

Peretti's work, with its themes of spiritual warfare, has been described belonging to "an older tradition of believers, including C. S. Lewis, John Bunyan, and John Milton (and before them, medieval and ancient apocalyptic writers), who depicted angels and humans at war."

Jay R. Howard summarizes the worldview underlying Peretti's works:

In this worldview education, government, the mass media, the ecological movement, and big business are each corrupted by a New Age/Satanic conspiracy for the control of society and souls of humans.

The New Age movement is noted by Howard as "the tie that binds the villains" throughout Peretti's novels. Peretti depicts New Age beliefs as promoting demonic activity and attempting to gain dominance while limiting Christianity. It is shown expanding through the education system – led by the US's top university – and practitioners including environmentalists, government officials, and teachers. Public education is thus "a battle ground for the confrontation of good and evil."