Andrews & Wilson is the bestselling writing team of Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson—the authors behind the Shepherds series, the Tier One and Sons of Valor series, and Rogue Asset, the ninth book in the W.E.B. Griffin Presidential Agent series. They write action-adventure and covert operations novels honoring the heroic men and women who serve in the military and intelligence communities.
Brian is a former submarine officer, entrepreneur, and Park Leadership Fellow with degrees from Vanderbilt and Cornell. Jeff worked as an actor, firefighter, paramedic, jet pilot, and diving instructor, as well as a vascular and trauma surgeon. During his fourteen years of service, Jeff made multiple deployments as a combat surgeon with an East Coast–based SEAL Team. Jeff now leads a men’s military ministry for a large church in Tampa.
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TFx: Dark Intercept is the first of three novels in the Shepherds series. Can you give us a brief overview of the series?
Andrews & Wilson:
The Shepherds series follows Navy SEAL Jedidiah Johnson, a man haunted by a strange event in his youth that shook his faith and put his life on a new trajectory. Now medically retiring after an injury, he is called back into action when his estranged childhood best friend David reaches out for help in locating his kidnapped daughter, Sarah Beth.
This begins Jedidiah’s journey into the world of spiritual warfare, fought in the shadows by the mysterious covert action unit known as the Shepherds. Dark Intercept kicks off an action-filled series that explores biblical concepts of spiritual warfare, good and evil, and crises in faith in a modern setting while beginning Jedidiah’s heroic journey to redemption.
TFx: You’re known for having coauthored the popular military series Tier One. Why will readers of the Tier One series enjoy the Shepherds series? What is different about the Shepherds series that fans will find surprising?
Andrews & Wilson:
The Shepherds series incorporates all the thrilling elements our Tier One readers love and look forward to: covert operations intrigue, fast-paced action sequences, and nefarious plots carried out by bad guys who are as competent as they are vile. What sets this series apart from our previous work is a deeply personal spiritual component. Through the protagonist’s eyes, we tackle questions of faith and purpose. Like so many of our readers, our hero has regrets.
He needs answers to questions that he’s too afraid to ask. He second-guesses the choices he’s made in his past, and the path forward he’s seeking is both unclear and frightening. To the world, he presents himself as a battle-hardened warrior who has it all figured out. But on the inside, our hero is racked with self-doubt. Like so many of us, he realizes he can’t figure it all out by himself, alone and in his own headspace. He needs help. He needs faith. He needs God.
TFx: Some of the underlying themes in Dark Intercept are war, crisis of faith, and the nature of evil. Why are these relevant themes for a thriller novel releasing in 2021?
Andrews & Wilson: These themes are not only impacting an increasingly large percentage of our population as war rages on for twenty years now, but these are also themes that are increasingly relevant to those who have never served or been close to those who have. Terrorism, COVID-19, violent protests, racism, increasingly divisive social pressures—these are things that have touched all of our lives in recent years and, we believe, are just as relevant to the themes explored in the Shepherds series as wartime service.
TFx: When readers turn the last page of this book, how do you hope they feel? What new idea or lesson do you hope they carry with them?
Andrews & Wilson: First, we want you to be breathless from what we hope is an exciting ride—Dark Intercept is written to be an action thriller novel. But we hope the reader also walks away inspired to find hope and answers to some of their own spiritual warfare and faith crisis questions as they get an intimate view of Jedidiah’s struggles for those answers.
Get Andrews and Wilson's latest release, Dark Intercept out now on Amazon.
When dark forces rise, are faith and firepower enough?
On the eve of his medical retirement, Navy SEAL Jedidiah Johnson receives a frantic call from his estranged childhood best friend David Yarnell. David’s daughter has been kidnapped off the streets of Nashville in broad daylight. The police have no suspects and no leads. The only clue: the body of a dead priest left behind at the scene. With the clock ticking, David is growing desperate, as is his wife, Rachel . . . Jed’s first love.
Despite his painful history with David and Rachel, Jed agrees to help. But he’s spent his career as a door-kicking Navy SEAL, not an investigator. His presence immediately draws unwanted attention, creates friction with the local police, and triggers a mysterious attempt on his life. Just when he thinks things can’t get worse, it starts to happen again—the voices in his head, the nightmares, the visions. Dark memories and strange abilities, things he believed he’d left behind when he fled Nashville for the Navy at eighteen, begin to resurface.
Jed realizes that to save the missing girl, he must take a leap of faith and embrace the gifts he’s denied for all these years. To foil this dark intercept, he’ll need more than just his years as a SEAL operator, because he has no choice now but to take up arms and join the battle in the unseen spiritual warfare raging all around him. And there is far more at stake than just a missing girl: the world is not the place he thought it was—and he is not alone.
Follow the military heroes of The Shepherds series as they bring the power of light into the dark mystery of Sara Beth’s abduction.
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