“Rosa Mystica: A Mother’s Mystery” Receives Literary Titan Book Award for Its Powerful Portrait of Motherhood, Faith, and Lifelong Caregiving

Portland, OR – August 21st, 2026 – Rosa Mystica: A Mother’s Mystery by author, theologian, and educator Jule DeJager Ward has received the Literary Titan Book Award, recognizing the memoir’s moving exploration of motherhood, disability, faith, grief, and the enduring strength of family love.

In Rosa Mystica: A Mother’s Mystery, Ward recounts her decades-long journey raising four children, including Kristy and Johnny, two children affected by a mysterious neurological disorder that doctors were unable to diagnose. What began with seizures in infancy developed into an increasingly complex medical reality, leaving Ward to navigate repeated doctor visits, educational challenges, caregiving decisions, and the painful experience of advocating for children whose condition was not always fully understood or believed.

Ward knew in her bones that she was not overreacting. When appointment after appointment ended without answers, she continued pressing the medical community to recognize that something was seriously wrong. As uncertainty reshaped the motherhood she had once imagined, she found herself relying on persistence, family, and a faith that deepened through decades of caregiving.

Literary Titan praised the memoir as “a deeply personal family memoir” whose central focus is “the fierce, evolving love within a family learning how to meet each new day.” The review also commends Ward’s ability to portray Kristy and Johnny as complete individuals, with their own talents, personalities, friendships, hopes, and frustrations, while depicting both the hardship and joy that existed throughout the family’s life together.

Faith provides the book with both its title and narrative structure. Inspired by Mary as the “Mystical Rose,” Ward organizes the memoir around the mysteries of the rosary, drawing connections between the spiritual dimensions of motherhood and her own experiences of love, suffering, loss, and grace. The structure grew from the final weeks of Kristy’s life, when Ward prayed the rosary aloud beside her daughter in the hospital and began to recognize parallels between Mary’s journey as a mother and her own.

Ward’s reflections are also informed by her academic background. While raising her family, she earned a Ph.D. in Theology, developing a more reflective understanding of Roman Catholic faith while simultaneously discovering what belief meant in the most difficult moments of daily life.

The Literary Titan Book Award adds to the growing recognition for Rosa Mystica: A Mother’s Mystery, which was also named a finalist in the Vine Leaves 2025 International Voices in Nonfiction Competition.

Through hospital corridors, family celebrations, school meetings, moments of humor, devastating decisions, and the eventual transition to residential care, Ward offers readers an intimate look at what it means to care for loved ones across a lifetime. The result is a memoir about far more than an unexplained medical condition. It is a meditation on dignity, resilience, family, and the limits and extraordinary power of a mother’s love.

About the Author

Jule DeJager Ward is an author, theologian, educator, and longtime advocate for families. She is the author of La Leche League: At the Crossroads of Medicine, Feminism, and Religions and co-author of Suffer the Little Children: Urban Violence and Sacred Space. For 24 years, she served as a religious studies faculty member at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois.

Ward is a past member of the National Board of the Christian Family Movement and has contributed to the development and publication of study guides for family advocacy organizations. Now active in the writing community of Portland, Oregon, she participates in an international writers’ group formed following a summer workshop at the University of Iowa. The group of twelve writers has remained together for more than a decade.

In addition to her nonfiction work, Ward has written and published seven children’s stories and six fables inspired by Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Her memoir, Rosa Mystica: A Mother’s Mystery, received the Literary Titan Book Award and was named a finalist in the Vine Leaves 2025 International Voices in Nonfiction Competition.

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Country: United States
Website: https://legacybookpress.com/rosa-mystica/