After a five year clinical trial at Dana Farber Hospital to treat bone marrow cancer, Maria "Cookie" Harris wrote a small book, "His Passion Within the Fruit," in 2006 to show the positive effects God has had in her recovery and her life.

For the last five years, the Onset native has been working on a much bigger book collecting personal testimonies from people across the country who have felt God help them overcome personal struggles.

"The ultimate goal is to plant a seed of hope," Harris said of the book. "We're offering information we think may help someone's journey."

Harris, a retired teacher and school administrator, collaborated on the new book, "Glory Stories: Real Life Testimonies of God's Amazing Goodness," with two of her friends, Bernice Rahming, an 82-year-old pastor at a 5,000+ member church in Florida, and Rahming's daughter, Monique Felder, who Harris met when they were both teaching elementary school in Maryland.

The three women collaborated to collect intimate stories from people via letters, e-mail and in person, about how they felt God help them through times of personal struggle. Harris said they talked to people from their churches, prison ministries, people recovering from addiction, people who have gone through divorces or lost a child and many others.

Harris said she initially didn't want to write the book when the other two were proposing the idea, but her mind was changed after she saw the continued positive effect her first book, "His Passion with the Fruit" had.

She said she heard from a woman who told her the book helped save her marriage and a policewoman in Onset who told her she kept her book on her nightstand.

"I saw I was touching the lives of other people and helped make their journey a little lighter," Harris said.

She said doctors at Dana-Farber use the pictures in her book, which are peaceful scenes around Onset, as a prompt for patient reflections. Harris was working as a principal at a school in Rhode Island in 2001 when she was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, cancer of the bone marrow. She was given an 18-24 month prognosis.

She said overcoming that has helped her gain a gratitude and appreciate the little things in life. Harris said she took on the lion share of work on the book because she had the most free time, being the only one of the three women not working. She said most of her time was spent cataloguing and titling the testimonies as well as separating them into chapters. The driving theme of the book is about overcoming struggles, allowing for periods of reflection and helping the reader try to grow and become closer to God.

"I feels tremendously blessed by working on this," she said. ""It's given me a focus."

Harris will be doing a book signing at her church, Onset Foursquare Church at 301 Onset Ave. on April 4 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. She said the proceeds from the book will help the outreach programs at the three author's churches.