Sherwood author blends faith-based experience into three novels

SHERWOOD, Ore. — Having served in the U.S. Marines and spent years as a church pastor, a Sherwood resident switched gears to write three faith-based novels.

Dean Coonradt, whose books are available on Amazon, has lived in Sherwood 14 months along with his wife, Alice. He has four children and four grandchildren.

After turning 18, Coonradt was not certain what career to pursue.

“I turned 18 and didn’t really know what to do, so I did kind of a punting,” he said. “I went to Cal State Fullerton, which is in Southern California, still living at home, driving there, driving back, not knowing what to major in.”

Coonradt, who is still ordained in the Church of the Nazarene, continued, “I wanted to do the most radical thing I could think of that wasn’t foolish, so I joined the Marines on a delayed entry program. My mother didn’t like the idea, but I wanted to do something different. I finished the year in college and went to boot camp in the summer of 1981.”

In the Marines, Coonradt served as an avionics technician, but decided that wasn’t what he wanted to do. 

Coonradt found an interest in the Bible and theology, and went to college at Bethany Nazarene College (now Southern Nazarene University) in Oklahoma. He changed his major to religion and graduated in 2.5 years because he had other college experience.

Coonradt went on to seminary in Kansas City, Missouri and eventually became a pastor in 1991 in rural Oklahoma.

He worked as a pastor in Oxnard, California and Carlsbad, New Mexico before going international and serving at an international church in Saigon, Vietnam.

“I had gone over to Cambodia with some missionary friends,” he said. “I loved it … I saw the interior of Cambodia.”

In Saigon, Coonradt became a pastor in 2015 and served there for 7.5 years.

“It was very visionary,” he said. “I loved it, pastoring people from all over the world … it took getting used to … I liked it.”

Coonradt determined it was time to come home, but his goal of becoming a pastor at an interdenominational church didn’t work out.

“My wife had a good job,” he said. “I didn’t need to do it financially, so we decided I would be retired, although I never checked that box officially.”

Coonradt served as a pastor for 31 years.

“When I was in my second church in Oxnard, California, I think it was around the year 2000 that I started to think about other ways to get the word out, rather than just preaching and teaching in the local church,” he said. “I thought of someone like C.S. Lewis, who wrote novels that were Christian …and I thought maybe I can try that, so I started writing a novel based on my first church in Oklahoma.”

Coonradt continued, “This book (Desolate Plain, the first book) really is a lot of high tech, even war action, but it’s really about one man’s soul, the pastor’s soul … It’s kind of a wild story, but my goal was to get people thinking about their own spiritual life.” 

His second and third books make up the trilogy.

Asked if he is thinking of a fourth book, or perhaps more, Coonradt said, “I’ve done some work on a nonfiction book that is basically pointing out the errors of progressivism and socialism, because some crazy things are happening. I’m kind of slow-walking it right now. I might not do it.”

Looking at the future, and possible new novels, Coonradt said, “I think writing is kind of hard. When I came home from Vietnam, I decided to bear down and revise and edit these books and learn how to self-publish them on Amazon.”

He added, “Writing novels became a second layer to when I was a pastor doing the preaching and teaching. This became like a second way of doing that.”