As they say in Texas, sometimes you need to take the bull by the horns. My dad lived there and he was known to do just that. When his only daughter wrote and illustrated a children’s book, my father sent a copy to the features columnist at the local paper, letting him know this was a story he would be surely be intererested in.

Ahem.

Never doubt the power of a proud and determined parent, because a month later this article was published:

Joy of adoption highlighted in new book, ‘Joseph’s Heart’  by Rick Smith

SAN ANGELO, Texas — “This is the story of Joseph,” the book begins. “He lived a long time ago in Nazareth, a village in the small country of Israel. Life was not easy.”

In her new book, “Joseph’s Heart: A Story of Adoption,” writer and illustrator Mary Clare Evans retells the timeless story of the famous adoption.

Promoters of adoption awareness and education, she and her husband have two sons, one adopted and one theirs by birth.

“We feel blessed by the birth and the adoption,” she said. “We encourage people who have been touched by adoption to inspire those who are considering it. It’s beautiful.”

The idea for her book was born one Christmas when she was putting up a Nativity and thinking of the “amazing miracle that God would create a family for his son of birth through adoption.

“I wanted to share that with the kids. I thought it would make a wonderful children’s book, but I couldn’t find anything close to what I was looking for, so I ended up writing it myself.”

The book is “a gentle story about a baby coming into the world,” she told me by phone from Columbus, Ohio, where she lives with her husband, Daniel, and their sons.

“Joseph stepped up and did what God asked him to do. He was a quiet superhero.”

The book is filled with her beautiful illustrations that will appeal to people of all ages.

The story, powerful yet simple, can be understood and enjoyed by children as well as adults.

It tells of the young Joseph’s early life and his plan to create a family with God’s blessing.

“Joseph prayed he could help fulfill God’s promise of children as numerous as the stars in the heaven,” the author wrote.

“But God had a different plan, one Joseph could not foresee. A plan that would change the world. God could only carry out his plan if two people said yes. One of them was Joseph.”

Mary Clare’s book closely shadows the Christmas story we learned as children.

It asks us to consider the decisions Joseph faced when he learned his wife-to-be was expecting a child and he wasn’t the father.

“There was no good solution,” Mary Clare said. “He was faced with a dilemma.”

If he married a woman who had broken Jewish law, she would be stoned to death.

If he sent her away to somewhere else, she would have to beg to survive, a slower way to die.

“There was no good choice,” she said. “Then God sent an angel, and the rest is history.”

Though the Biblical stories sound simple, “they are so much richer than at first glance,” Mary Clare said.

The book quotes passages from the Bible but “only a few stories about (Joseph) even exist, and no words he spoke were ever written down,” she said.

“We only know what he did.”