A Man Set Free

About the Book

Fiery preachers have said for ages that God can reach into the deepest depth of the dregs of society to rescue and restore even the vilest of human creatures. That seemed to pretty well define the man known to the California Prison System as Ricardo Fuentes. He grew up fast and hard in San Pedro Sula, the second largest city in Honduras, drinking and fighting his way through the teen years. When he killed a man in a late-night knife fight, Fuentes fled his native land only to find himself living behind bars of California prisons for charges of attempted murder and armed robbery after being set up by a crime partner in an act of revenge.

God's faithfulness to answer the prayers of the Christian woman he'd left behind in Honduras reached through prison walls and cell bars to draw the heart of a hardened man to a new life, one that God promised would bring him before multitudes of people to testify about the work of the risen Lord Jesus Christ when he died on a cross two thousand years ago. That new life would prove to be the end of Fuentes' search for meaning. Lying in a pool of his own blood, it would also prove to be one that taught him how his victims felt when they faced danger from the muzzle end of his firearms.

About the Author

A journalist, photographer and adventurer, John Butterworth spent from 1994 through early 2003 working in the newspaper industry. As editor of a small town weekly known as the Benton Bulletin, he reported, photographed, editorialized, designed, laid out the pages and "took out the garbage and swept the floor" for four years.

After that newspaper shut its doors, the daily newspaper he competed against, Corvallis Gazette-Times, hired him as the cops and rural beat reporter. Later he covered environmental issues, filled in on the copy desk and served as interim city editor for eight months.

But the writer has done far more than write. Accepting Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior as a 20-year-old in 1969, his experience as a Marine Corps tank mechanic took him from Los Angeles to the Oregon Coast where he wound up working in the timber industry as a logger, tree planter, fire fighter, mill hand and timber feller throughout Idaho, Washington, California and Oregon. It was after serious injuries as a logger and timber feller that he returned to college in 1991 to study journalism.

During his career in the timber industry, he also spent five years serving as a supervisor and principal in small Christian schools in both Oregon and Idaho. He now feels called to journal the workings of God in the early 21st Century.

Along with his wife, Bev, author of a small town monthly "nice" gossip column, he continues to live in their home a few miles outside the unincorporated town of Alsea, Oregon - also hometown for a daughter, son-in-law and grandson, and another son. Two other sons have moved from Alsea to Boise, Idaho where they and a daughter-in-law and three grandsons serve in the Church of the Harvest.