Abigail's New Hope , livre ebook

Harvest House Publishers - Mary Ellis

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

153 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

As an Amish midwife, Abigail Graber loves bringing babies into the world. But when a difficult delivery takes a devastating turn, Abigail is faced with some hard choices. Despite her best efforts, the young mother dies-but the baby is saved.When a heartless judge confines Abigail to the county jail for her mistakes, her sister Catherine comes to care for her children while Daniel works his fields. Catherine meets Daniel's reclusive cousin, Isaiah, who's deaf and thought to be simple minded by his community. She endeavors to teach him to communicate and discovers he possesses unexpected gifts and talents.While Abigail searches for forgiveness, Catherine changes lives and, in return, finds love, something long elusive in her life. And Isaiah discovers God, who cares nothing about our handicaps or limitations in His sustaining love.An inspirational tale of overcoming grief, maintaining faith, and finding hope in an ever-changing world.About This Series: Fans of superb Amish fiction will welcome the rich and moving stories of The Wayne County series by the bestselling author of A Widow's Hope, Never Far from Home, and The Way to a Man's Heart.

Sujets

Romance

Informations

Publié par	Harvest House Publishers
Date de parution	01 avril 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780736940627
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A BIGAIL S
N EW H OPE
MARY ELLIS

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture verses are taken from the Holy Bible , New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189 USA. All rights reserved.
Cover by Garborg Design Works, Savage, Minnesota
Cover photos Chris Garborg
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
ABIGAIL S NEW HOPE
Copyright 2011 by Mary Ellis
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellis, Mary
Abigail s new hope/ Mary Ellis.
p. cm.-(The Wayne County series ; bk. 1)
ISBN 978-0-7369-3009-3 (pbk.)
1. Midwives-Fiction. 2. Amish-Fiction. 3. Deaf-Fiction. I. Title.
PS3626.E36A63 2011
813 .6-dc22
2010039220
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 / LB-NI / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the dedicated women who serve as midwives to the Amish and Mennonite communities.
May all your deliveries run smooth as silk.
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Carol Lee Shevlin, who introduced me to the New Bedford Care Center in Fresno, Ohio, a nonprofit birthing center owned and operated by local Mennonite and Amish communities.
A special thank-you to the fine officers of the Wayne County Sheriff s Office, for answering my endless questions about department procedures and their jail facility.
Thanks also to Mrs. Sue Jarvis and the other dedicated men and women working with Jail Ministries, who bring hope, faith, and the Word of God to those incarcerated.
Thanks to Patricia Daly Marconi for her wonderful inspiration.
Thanks to my agent, Mary Sue Seymour, who had faith in me from the beginning, and to my lovely proofreader, Mrs. Joycelyn Sullivan.
Finally, thanks to my editor, Kim Moore, and the wonderful staff at Harvest House Publishers.
And thanks be to God-all things in this world are by His hand.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
Discussion Questions
About the Author
One
June
C ome help us, mamm ! The excited voice of six-year-old Laura floated across the lawn. Abby grinned, watching her daughter and four-year-old son, Jake, chase lightning bugs through the grass with jelly jars in hand. Despite the industrious efforts of the kinner , the fireflies successfully evaded capture to blink and glow another night.
Why are you two off the porch? You both were already washed for bed. Abby walked back from the barn with her palms perched on her hips.
She glanced up as a squeak from the screen door signaled the arrival of the final Graber family member, her ehemann of ten years. I thought you were reading them a story, she said with a sly smile.
Daniel slicked a hand through his thick hair, his hat nowhere in sight. Then he braced calloused palms against the porch rail. Relax, wife. That grass looks pretty clean from where I m standing. You won t have to start from scratch. Didn t it rain just the other day? His smile deepened the lines around his eyes. With the setting sun glinting off his sun-burnished nose, he looked as mischievous as one of their children.
Abby watched the warm summer night unfold around her family with no desire to scold. The young ones would have the rest of their lives to have perfectly clean feet, but the summers of childhood were numbered. Besides, it was too nice an evening for anyone to go to bed on time. Walking up the porch steps, she stepped easily into Daniel s strong arms and rested her head against his shoulder. Within his embrace, and with her two healthy offspring darting about like honeybees in spring clover, she savored the almost-longest day of the year.
Swifts and swallows made their final canvass above the meadow before settling for the night in barn rafter nests or in the hollows of dead trees. Upon their exit from the sky, bats would take their place, swooping and soaring on wind currents, gobbling pesky mosquitoes. The breeze, scented with the last of the lilacs and the first of the honeysuckle, felt cool on her overheated skin.
Everything all charged up for the night? he asked close to her ear.
Daniel s question, the same one he asked nearly every night since she d become a midwife, broke the idyllic trance she had wandered into-the all s-well-with-the-world feeling one gets after a satisfying day. Jah , she murmured. I ran the generator long enough to charge my battery packs. And I put a fresh battery in my cell phone for tonight, but I don t expect any middle-of-the-night calls. After yesterday s delivery, no babies are expected for several weeks.
Hmm, he concluded, nuzzling the top of her head. We both know how well babies stick to doctors timetables. I m fixing a cup of tea and heading upstairs. Yours will be cooling on the table for whenever you re ready. He brushed his lips across the top of her kapp before going inside, the screen door slamming behind him.
The nice thing about being married for ten years is that a person gets to know someone very well. Daniel Graber knew she enjoyed her beverages at room temperature-not too hot and not too cold. And she knew he needed to take mental inventory before going to bed to make sure the family s ducks were all in a row. So she didn t mind being asked about her cell phone charger each evening.
After all, a midwife, even an Amish midwife, needed to be accessible twenty-four hours a day. The Ordnung , or rules that governed their Old Order district, didn t stipulate how Amish wives had their babies. A woman could have an obstetrician deliver at an English hospital, or she could go to a birthing center where a specially trained, certified nurse-midwife would bring her baby into the world. But many Old Order Amish preferred to have their babies at home, the center of their rural lives. Unlike their English counterparts, they usually continued to work during labor-washing dishes, picking beans in the garden, even giving the porch rocker a fresh coat of paint-until the baby made its grand entrance.
At thirty, Abigail Graber was an experienced midwife, having assisted the local physician or nurse-midwife in hundreds of deliveries. She d received training and apprenticed with a nurse-midwife for several years, but she d never set foot in college because she was Amish like her patients. And though her time-honored vocation allowed Abigail to witness the miracle of creation firsthand, even without advanced education she understood how quickly things could go wrong for either mother or child.
Ohio and Pennsylvania, the two states with the highest population of Amish families, didn t license midwives who weren t registered nurses under current guidelines. Therefore, Abby s duties generally involved preparing the mother-and the father-for the baby s arrival. She would give the women back massages to loosen tight muscles or have them soak in warm tubs to speed the delivery. Because their rural doctor refused to sit around people s kitchens waiting for babies to be born, Abigail would monitor the mother s contractions to keep him informed. Abby loved the waiting time while fathers debated possible names and mothers crocheted last-minute socks. Dr. Weller would usually arrive just in time to deliver the infant, and then he returned to his office patients or his own warm bed. Abby would remain to wash the new mother, bathe the infant in the kitchen sink, and finish the paperwork at the table. She never left a home until the newborn was comfortably nursing at the mother s breast.
Home births were solely for healthy women with low-risk pregnancies and not for women with diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, or if a previous birth had been difficult. Patients were to receive regular prenatal care in the doctor s office to monitor their medical condition and the baby s development. For that reason, Abby knew none of the doctor s patients was due any time soon. But, as Daniel aptly pointed out, babies didn t listen very well.
And God often had other plans when a woman grew too comfortable, too placid in the sheer flawlessness of her life. On that June evening, as her own two healthy children scrambled up the steps to bed, their feet surprisingly clean, Abby almost felt smug in her contentment. She rocked in the porch swing, sipping tea and contemplating the planet Venus as it sat low and bright on the horizon.
The ring of her cell phone jarred her senses. Hello. Graber residence.
Abigail Graber? asked an unfamiliar voice. This is Nathan Fisher. Ruth and I rented the Levi Yoder place here in Shreve after the elder Mr. Yoder passed on. I m calling you from the neighbor s house.
Silence ensued as Abby wracked her brain. Fisher was a very common name, but she didn t recall meeting someone named Ruth Fisher in Dr. Weller s office. What can I do for you, Mr. Fisher? She finished her tea in one long swallow.
My wife wants you to come see her. She said that I should call you and nobody else. She got your number from one of the gals in our district.
Abby frowned, feeling annoyance take hold. Her Plain brethren maintained the old-fashioned habi