Amish Bride , livre ebook

Harvest House Publishers - Starns Clark Mindy , Leslie Gould

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186 pages

English

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Bestselling authors Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould offer readers The Amish Bride, Book 3 in the Women of Lancaster County series, which tells the stories of young Plain women as they explore their roots, connect with family, and discover true love.Ella Bayer and Ezra Gundy are in love and hope to marry someday, but she is a young Mennonite woman while he is an Amish man. Though both Plain, one of them will have to forsake what they believe to embrace another way of life.Hoping some distance will cool the relationship, Ezra's family sends him to work at an Amish dairy farm in Indiana. But Ella disregards what her family wants and follows Ezra. In short order she finds a place to live, a job in a bakery, and an unexpected but budding friendship with a handsome Amish farmhand, Luke. When a family tragedy forces Ella back to Pennsylvania, she must face all she's been running away from. And once she has made peace with those around her, she has an important decision to make: Whose Amish bride will she become-Ezra's or Luke's?

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Romance

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Publié par	Harvest House Publishers
Date de parution	01 août 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780736942829
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.

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HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible and from The Holy Bible, New International Version NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com .
The authors are represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc. of Hillsboro, Oregon.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Cover by Garborg Design Works, Savage, Minnesota
Cover photos Chris Garborg
THE AMISH BRIDE
Copyright 2012 by Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, Mindy Starns.
The Amish bride / Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould.
p. cm. - (The women of Lancaster County ; bk. 3)
ISBN 978-0-7369-3862-4 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-4282-9 (eBook)
1. Amish-Fiction. 2. Lancaster County (Pa.)-Fiction. I. Gould, Leslie, 1962- II. Title.
PS3603.L366A77 2012
813 .6-dc23
2012005745
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.
Mindy: For my aunt, Fanny Lynn Starns, my own personal hero of the faith and lifelong friend, and
Leslie: For my sister Laurie Snyder, for showing what it means to live out heaven s hope on earth.
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
P SALM 63:7
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Epilogue
Discussion Questions
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mindy thanks
My husband, John, whose input on this story was invaluable. You are my story-shaper, my love, and my best friend.
Our daughters, Emily and Lauren, who help in ways too numerous to count.
Vanessa Thompson, Stephanie Ciner, and Helen Styer Hannigan, the best office support team a writer could ask for.
Leslie thanks
My husband, Peter, who was the first reader of this story, even though he was commanding a field hospital in Afghanistan at the time. (I can t imagine life without you, more so now than ever.)
Our children: Kaleb, Taylor, Hana, and Thao, for their endless support.
Laurie Snyder and Tina Bustamante, for reading the manuscript in its early stages and offering invaluable advice and support, and Libby Salter for reading later in the process.
My writing group members: Kelly Chang, Melanie Dobson, Nicole Miller, and Dawn Shipman. Jenna Thompson for insightful ideas into this story. And Kylie Naslund for sharing her passion for all things culinary.
Jeff Kitson, executive director of the Nappanee, Indiana, Chamber of Commerce, for his assistance and direction; the many good people of Elkhart County that I encountered while researching this story; and the staff of the Menno-Hof Amish/Mennonite Information Center in Shipshewana, Indiana for an outstanding experience.
Mindy and Leslie thank
Our agent, Chip MacGregor, for his vision for this series; our editor, Kim Moore, for her dedication to our stories; and the exceptional folks at Harvest House Publishers for giving such care and attention to every detail of the publishing process.
Also, thanks to Dave Siegrist for his expertise; the Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for their invaluable resources; Erik Wesner, author of amishamerica.com , for his insightful view of the Amish; and Georgia Varozza for mouthwatering inspiration through her book The Homestyle Amish Kitchen Cookbook.
P ROLOGUE
M y grandmother was stalling like a little kid at bedtime. I bent down to kiss her a second time. Mammi , I really need to go. Ezra s waiting for me. He was at the end of the lane on his motorcycle.
But I have something for you. She forced her recliner down and struggled to a standing position. It s important.
Afraid she might fall, I hurried to her side. Tell me where it is, I said. I ll get it myself.
She plopped back down into her chair. Let me see it s a book
Oh, boy. This wasn t a good time for Mammi to start on a new topic. I sent Ezra a quick text as she spoke, telling him to give me another minute, knowing it was bound to be even longer than that.
I think it s in my room, she said. On the dresser. Or maybe the nightstand.
I m on it. I hurried down the narrow hall, darting into her bedroom. It was tidy as a pin thanks to my Aunt Klara, who lived in the big house on the property. The dresser was bare except for Mammi s hairbrush. On the nightstand was her Bible and another leather-bound book, one equally big and thick.
There was nothing on the worn cover to indicate what it was, so I picked it up and looked inside, surprised to see that this was no printed tome but instead something homemade, done by hand. Cool.
On the first page was a list of names, four in a row, one in block letters and the other three in cursive. The first one, printed in a child s hand, said Sarah Gingrich. Under that, although the handwriting of the script was small and oddly slanted and difficult to decipher, I made out the name Sarah Stoll. Then, below that, Sarah Chapman, and finally Sarah Berg. If I was recalling my family history correctly, Sarah Berg was Mammi s mother. My great-grandmother. I knew she was born as a Gingrich and ended up as a Berg, but I d never heard of her having the last name of Stoll or Chapman in between. Weird.
I carefully flipped through the book as I moved back up the hall, intrigued by the quirky things I saw inside. It held a mix of drawings both large and small, recipes, an occasional journal entry, and other miscellaneous writings. Every word was in English, which surprised me. As a first-generation immigrant, it seemed as though she would have written in German, at least when she was younger.
The whole book was offbeat, but some of the pages were especially so. They held an odd mix of numbers and letters-or at least I thought they were letters at first glance. Pausing in the hallway to take a closer look, I realized they weren t letters at all but instead some sort of intricate, squiggly lines. Bizarre.
Mammi , this is so cool, I said as I closed the book and entered the living room. Did this belong to my great-grandmother?
Yes, and I want you to have it.
Seriously? Wow. Thanks, Mammi . I held the book against my chest. I can t wait to read it. I m glad it s not in German.
She seemed surprised at the thought. Well, my mother spoke German, of course, but she never learned to write it. She was taught to write only English in school.
Oh. Duh. I opened the front cover. What s the deal with the three last names here? Did your mom marry more than once?
It s a long story
My phone beeped. Ezra! I d forgotten all about him.
and obviously you don t have time for it tonight.
You re right. I have to go, but I ll be back soon.
Good. Next time you re over, I ll tell you more about her. My mother was quite the oh, how would you say it?
I shrugged. Since her stroke I d grown used to helping her find the words she wanted, but I had no idea what she was looking for now.
Her faded blue eyes lit up. Free spirit.
I smiled. Thank you, Mammi . I held the book close. I can t tell you how much this means to me.
You re welcome, dear.
Why me, though? Instead of Lexie or Ada, I mean. I m honored, but I just don t understand.
Mammi met my eyes and smiled. Because of who my mother was. Not just a free spirit, but stubborn and feisty too. Sound familiar? Her eyebrows raised, but when I chose to ignore her implication, she added, Just like you.
I m not sure that s a compliment.
Oh, it is. You re smart like her too, and oh, so pretty. You have her thick hair and lovely skin. You re even gifted creatively the way she was. Mostly, though, you have her spunk.
I wasn t used to receiving compliments from family members and felt too awkward to respond.
Mammi didn t seem to notice, though. Instead, her eyes moved to the book in my hands. Gazing at it, her face began to cloud over, and I could see she was troubled.
There s another thing, about the book, she said.
I glanced toward the door, feeling bad for Ezra, though I didn t protest lest she give me one of her disapproving looks. Neither his family, which was entirely Amish, nor mine, which was a mix of Mennonite and Amish, made any secret of the fact that they weren t thrilled about our relationship.
This is just between us, she continued, oblivious to my impatience. There s something unique about it that you have to understand. And there s something important I need you to do for me.
Her odd tone brought my attention back to her. Curious, I lowered myself to the chair on her left and waited for her to elaborate. She gestured toward the book, so I opened it up and flipped through it, angling it so that she could see the pages.
All of those tiny drawings at the tops and bottoms Her voice trailed off.
These nifty little doodles? Glancing down, I tilted the heavy tome my way. It s funny, but they kind of remind me