Bitter Roots

Fruit can be plucked. Vines can be trimmed. But roots… roots run deep.

In the third installment of the Taboo Romances series, John Mark takes readers below the surface – into the hidden places where desire begins long before it bears fruit. Bitter Roots exposes what happens when fear, loss, and longing twist into secret hunger, silently shaping lives until they are finally unearthed.

This collection of seven flash-fiction style stories wrestles with Christians facing what lies beneath:

A childhood friendship that threatens an engagement.

A mission trip where ministry turns into temptation.

A single mother tempted to lean too heavily on a neighbor’s kindness.

A seminary student discovering that knowledge cannot shield the heart.

A marriage cracking open under the weight of old wounds.

And a garden where roots are finally unearthed, showing the mercy of the Vinekeeper who digs deep.

Some endings move toward redemption. Others reveal fracture. A few hold both in tension through alternate endings. Each story reminds us that while roots may twist unseen, they are never beyond the reach of the One who uproots, replants, and makes all things new.

If Falling Fruit showed temptation’s sudden ripening, and Broken Vines revealed entanglements creeping through silence, Bitter Roots digs deeper – exposing what we’d rather hide, and pointing to the God who wastes nothing, not even what He cuts away.