Today’s guest blogger is Mary L. Hamilton.  She claims she grew up at a youth camp in Wisconsin, so when she writes her Rustic Knoll Bible Camp series, she knows what she is talking about.  Thus far, there are three books in the series. And she’ll give away a copy of See No Evil to one person who leaves a comment, selected at random.  Here’s a problem she ran into on the third book.

Things You Probably Never Knew About Sight

Imagine you’ve been blind from a very young age, and now as an adult, you undergo a corneal transplant. Suddenly, the world opens up and you’re able to see the faces of loved ones, the colors of nature, the mountains in the distance.

 Or maybe not. Some interesting things occur when vision is recovered after childhood blindness. As sighted people, we grow up learning the variations and shades of colors. But to someone who has never seen color, the variety can be confusing. How can baby blue, royal and navy all be the color blue? How can a woman with yellow hair, a child with nearly white hair and a dog with honey-colored fur all be blond?

 Faces pose a problem for those who never learned to identify others according to physical features. Facial expressions too are useless when you’ve never associated the emotion with the expression. Even identifying gender can be difficult when you’ve never had the opportunity to learn the social cues that help us distinguish between men and women.

As children, we learn depth perception naturally through our ability to see. We crawl, we reach for objects and fall from heights. All those normal childhood activities help our brains learn to gauge depth. But without sight to determine distance, a child’s brain never develops depth perception, and the adult brain finds it almost impossible to “catch up” when vision is restored.

 In my Rustic Knoll Bible Camp series, one character is a teenage camper who’s been blind as long as he can remember. I’d planned to feature him in the third book, See No Evil, having undergone a corneal transplant so he could see the camp he’s been coming to since he was five. Although the problems and necessary adjustments I’ve mentioned would’ve made a fascinating story, I feared it would take over the story I wanted to tell. With great reluctance, I kept my character blind. But my research gave me an incredible appreciation for this gift of vision!

Here’s a blurb for See No Evil.

Steven Miller (17) guards a dark secret. Dad drilled into Steven that blindness should never be used as an excuse. So when Steven finds an old triathlon medal among his dad’s belongings, he’s inspired to follow in his footsteps. Maybe it’ll quiet the guilt he’s carried since Dad’s death three years ago.

JIM:  Remember, Mary will give away a copy of See No Evil to one person, selected at random, who leaves a comment – even a short one.

And check out her website at:  : http://www.maryhamiltonbooks.com

She’s on Facebook at:  http://www.facebook.com/maryhamiltonbooks

Find her on Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/mhamiltonbooks