About

Lorelei Savaryn

Lorelei has been writing since childhood, earning her B.A. in Creative Writing from UW Milwaukee in 2009. She later returned to school to earn her teaching license and M.A. in Education, specializing in teaching in Urban Schools. She taught elementary school in Milwaukee and Racine, WI. She has 4 children and loves all the beautiful noise and nonsense.

She works currently as an instructional coach in Gurnee, IL and is author with Penguin Random House/Philomel. Her debut novel, The Circus of Stolen Dreams, will release September 1, 2020.

Lorelei also has a background in vocal performance, (usually at church, sometimes at karaoke) and community theater. She loves making her house a home- though she is working on not being phased by the messiness of this stage of life. Lorelei also undertook a deep and concentrated effort to examine her faith over 2015-2016, which resulted in her joyful conversion to Catholicism on Easter Vigil, 2016. Her journey is well documented on her previous blog, Protestant Interrupted.

John Paul Savaryn

John Paul (JP) grew up the oldest of five children in a devout Catholic family. Over that time he grew familiar with the expressions of the Church – the routines, the prayers, the mass, the holy days, etc. – but he never really got to know the source behind these beautiful expressions: Jesus. JP got to know about God, but he hadn’t yet come to know God. Thus, when shortly after marrying his beautiful bride at age 22 and the questions started to come – “Why do you pray to Mary?” “Why do you believe Mary was a virgin her whole life?” “Why….” – he was not adequately prepared to defend the doctrines and left the Catholic Church for Protestant Christianity.

Time went on and both JP and Lorelei found themselves living as practical atheists. JP professed that he believed in Jesus as Lord, but at the same time walked around not consulting Him on matters of living. JP lived as though Jesus did not exist. … Until he met a man who loved Jesus and loved making disciples. Through a process that lasted about a year, which included intense intellectual study of the philosophical, historical, and scriptural evidence for Christianity, JP fell in love with Jesus. As a result, JP passionately asked Jesus where he could find him, how he could get to know him in the fullest possible way. It was not long after this JP had come back to the Catholic Church, now knowing this time the heart and soul of the beautiful Church he left in years prior. JP will never forget receiving Jesus in the Eucharist for the fist time after coming back to the Church – with tears streaming down his face his request of our Lord was fulfilled: Jesus had brought JP to the alter of His Church where He gives Himself freely to all who draw near.

JP has a Ph.D. in molecular biology and currently works at a pharmaceutical company developing analytical methods that measure drug concentrations in the circulation. He has also taught biology classes part time for the Northwestern University School of Professional Studies.

 

Our Family

We have been married for nearly 13 years, and have 4 children. As a family, we love spending time together doing the simple things. Going to the beach, strawberry picking, going to the park, smelling the lilacs, reading stories, making forts, and family movie nights. We are a silly bunch.