Marie Wells Coutu is an award-winning author who finds inspiration in nearly forgotten places, overlooked history, and the beauty that can emerge from broken things. A former journalist and communications professional, Marie spent fifteen years with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association before turning her longtime love of fiction into a second career. Her debut novel, For Such a Moment, won the Books of Hope Contest and launched her award-winning Mended Vessels series.
Her Between the Rivers Legacy series grew from a fascination with western Kentucky’s Land Between the Lakes region that began decades ago, when she researched its creation for her master’s thesis at Murray State University. The series begins with Moonshine River, an inspirational historical romance set during the final months of Prohibition.
Marie and her husband live in north-central Iowa.

Finding Beauty in Broken Things

Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty where others might walk past without noticing—in the weathered grain of an old barn door, the twisted character of a gnarly tree, or the faded photograph tucked inside a forgotten book.
That eye for hidden treasures shapes not only how she moves through the world but also how she crafts her Christian novels. She sees stories the same way she sees beauty: as something worth discovering, preserving, and sharing before it disappears forever. Marie believes fiction can sometimes reach places straightforward truth
cannot. A story slips past our defenses and touches the heart, allowing us to see
familiar truths in new ways. Jesus Himself often taught through stories—parables about prodigal sons, compassionate Samaritans, lost sheep, and seeds falling on different kinds of soil. Two thousand years later, those stories still resonate.

For Marie, storytelling started early.
At eight years old, she wrote a play and somehow convinced every kid in her neighborhood to perform it. By senior year of high school in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, she was editor of the school newspaper. At Murray (Ky.) State University, she combined her love of writing and theater by majoring in journalism and drama, then earned a master’s degree in journalism with an emphasis in public relations.
That education led to a communications career that would take her from newspapers to government, higher education, and Christian ministry—and introduce her to plenty of stories along the way.
During four years as a lifestyle writer for the Waterbury Republican-
American in Connecticut, Marie interviewed people from all walks of life, including celebrities such as Dolly Parton, Olympic champion Peggy Fleming, members of Queen, and television talk-show host Mike Douglas.
A family move to Minnesota led to work on weekly and daily newspapers, teaching journalism at St. Cloud State University, and serving in public information for the State of Minnesota. Later, as Communications Director for Dakota County, Minnesota, she developed a citizens newsletter, cable television program, and website, earning numerous national awards during her eleven years there.
Then came fifteen years with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Marie managed the organization’s direct-mail program, worked with publishers to provide books to supporters, and oversaw the production of brochures, devotional books, and other publications. Among her most treasured memories from those years are the times she was able to interact personally with Billy Graham.
Through all those years of writing professionally, however, fiction remained her first love, patiently waiting for its turn.

Becoming a Novelist
In 2005, an idea took hold: a contemporary novel inspired by the biblical story of Esther.
Marie worked on the manuscript for years. It became a finalist in multiple writing contests but repeatedly encountered roadblocks to publication. Eventually, she set it aside and turned her attention to historical fiction, continuing to study the craft and grow as a novelist.

Then, in 2012, Write Integrity Press announced its Books of Hope Contest.
Marie pulled out the Esther manuscript, applied what she had learned, revised it, and entered.
For Such a Moment won.

Published in 2013, the novel launched Marie’s Mended Vessels series—contemporary stories inspired by women of the Bible. For Such a Moment, Thirsting for More, and The Secret Heart each went on to receive recognition in writing contests and awards.
The series also gave a name to an idea that had been running through Marie’s stories all along: brokenness does not have to be the end of the story.
Years later, that idea would inspire the name of her independent publishing imprint, Mended Vessels Press.

Returning Between the Rivers
After completing the Mended Vessels series, Marie found herself drawn
back to a place that had captured her imagination decades earlier—the isolated stretch of western Kentucky and Tennessee once known as Between the Rivers.
The connection was deeply personal.
Marie grew up near the region and camped there while attending Murray State University. For her master’s thesis, she researched the creation of Land Between the Lakes, the national recreation area established between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. But behind the recreation area’s lakes, forests, campgrounds, and trails was another story.
Families had lived Between the Rivers for generations. They had built homes, farms, churches, schools, businesses, and communities there. When the area was transformed into a national recreation area, those residents were relocated and their communities disappeared.
Their stories stayed with Marie.

Years later, when she began writing fiction set in the region, those memories and that earlier research provided fertile ground. She returned to historical sources,  photographs, maps, newspapers, oral histories, museums, and people who remembered the region.

The result became the Between the Rivers Legacy series—stories about fictional men and women whose lives intersect with the very real history of this remarkable place.
The first novel, Moonshine River, takes readers to 1930-33 and the final months of Prohibition.

Naomi Ross never wanted to become a moonshiner. But after her father’s death and with her mother’s life depending on medical treatment the family cannot afford, she sees little choice but to keep his illegal still operating.
Standing in her way is Cullen Downs, the preacher’s son she has loved nearly all her life. Cullen has returned home carrying failures of his own and is determined to shut down the illegal liquor trade Between the Rivers.

She’ll break the law to save her mother.
He’ll uphold it to save her soul.

Beneath the moonshine, danger, and romance lies a question Marie finds much more interesting than simply who is right and who is wrong: What happens when good  people, acting for reasons they believe are right, discover that their own understanding may be incomplete?
It’s a question that leads directly back to one of the themes that runs through Marie’s fiction—grace. Before publication, Moonshine River earned numerous honors in writing competitions, including first-place awards in both the Sheila Contest and the Touched by Love contest.

The second Between the Rivers Legacy novel, Silent Stream, moves the story forward to 1935. A devastating fire sweeps through Golden Pond, and Johnny Downs is accused of setting it. Tacey Higgins, a deaf young woman who has returned home following her mother’s death, knows something that could save him—but telling the truth could cost her the family she is desperately trying to hold together.

That manuscript, slated for publication in 2027, has also earned numerous contest honors, including wins in the Great Expectations and Sheila contests.
Future stories will continue to explore the people and history of the region, including the enormous changes brought to western Kentucky and Tennessee during the twentieth century.

History, Faith, and Hope
Marie is drawn to history not simply because she wants to know what happened, but because she wants to know what happened to the people who lived through it.

• What did they fear?
• What did they love?
• What did they lose?
• What choices did they face when history intruded upon ordinary life?

Her journalism background feeds that curiosity. Research is an integral part of her writing process, whether she’s digging through old newspapers, visiting historical sites, examining photographs and maps, or tracking down a tiny historical detail that may occupy only a sentence in the finished novel.

But historical accuracy is not the final destination.
At the heart of Marie’s stories are people—imperfect men and women wrestling with love, loyalty, loss, faith, and choices that don’t always have easy answers.
Again and again, her fiction returns to the possibility that something beautiful can emerge from what appears broken beyond repair.

Life Beyond the Keyboard
Marie has lived in seven states, but she and her husband of more than fifty
years now make their home in north-central Iowa. They enjoy spending time with their two grown children and their spouses, three grandsons, and one granddaughter. Travel is a favorite pastime—and, for Marie, often doubles as research. A historic house, an old cemetery, a museum, or an intriguing roadside marker can easily become the seed for another story. Marie and her husband are active in their church and especially enjoy making items and packing shoebox gifts for Operation Christmas Child, a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse.  And she is still drawn to weathered barns, crooked trees, faded photographs, forgotten communities, and stories that might otherwise disappear.
Because sometimes the most beautiful things are the ones that have been broken, weathered, overlooked, or nearly forgotten.

You just have to stop long enough to see them.