Tender Years (Prairie Legacy Book #1) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Janette Oke

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

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

124 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

Continuing the story from Love Comes Softly, the granddaughter of the Davis's experiences a tragedy, she has a crisis of faith.

Sujets

Historical fiction

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 août 2008
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781585587377
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0403€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 1997 by Janette Oke
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan. www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2010
Ebook corrections 04.14.2016 (VBN), 09.30.2016, 12.11.2016, 01.22.2020
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, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-58558-737-7
Cover by Jennifer Parker
Photographer: Mike Habermann
CONTENTS
Cover
Title
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
About the Author
Other books by Janette Oke
Back Cover
DEDICATION
F or Thomas of Nappanee.
I have no way of knowing if you will ever read this dedication or have the assurance that it was meant for you.
The years have passed quickly and you now have reached manhood. Be assured that I often think of you and remember you in prayer.
PROLOGUE
M ama? Mama, why don’t you sit down and rest some? You’ve been on your feet all day.”
“Well, with the crowd we got us here, it’s gonna take every pair of hands to be feedin’ them.” The soft chuckle that followed the statement answered more than the words did. Mother and daughter turned to survey the kitchen of bustling women. Marty glanced out the lace-covered window toward the yard spilling over with youngsters rushing about in near-frantic explosions of energy. From the back porch where Clark and his “boys” had gathered to reminisce came loud bursts of laughter. Someone must have shared another humorous family memory.
Marty smiled and squeezed Missie’s arm. It was so good to have them all gathered. All home.
No, not all. Not everyone had been able to come. Why, had they all been there, Marty did not know where they would have put them. The Davis family had grown until it was “’most an army,” Clark liked to say, and Marty always nodded in silent and thankful agreement. God had been good to them.
Her reverie was cut short as Missie gently urged, “Mama—you just sit down over here and supervise from this corner chair. You’ll be worn out come sundown.”
Marty allowed herself to be led to the appointed chair and lowered herself carefully onto the padded seat. She was tired. Flushed from the warmth of the kitchen, she withdrew a cotton hankie from her apron pocket and wiped her brow. It was an unseasonably warm fall day. She was glad that there was no rain—or snow. But the heat did make it more difficult for those laboring to prepare the family dinner.
Again her eyes passed over the laughing, chattering group who filled her kitchen with their sweeping skirts and busy hands.
They were no longer children—her girls. All home. All, that is, except Nandry, one of their adopted. They had lost Nandry four years back. Marty still grieved to think about it. Daughters Mary and Jane had married, but the oldest, Tina, still lived at home and cared for the father. He had become somewhat strange since losing his wife of many years. None of the children would be able to join the rest of the family for the gathering.
But Clae, Nandry’s sister, was with them. Clae and her retired preacher husband, though Joe’s health was not good. He looked pale and thin in Marty’s thinking. She longed to keep him there and see if she could put some flesh on his bones, though Clae no doubt had already tried. She supposed that ministering to people, with their many needs and the complex times, was a hard job for any man. And Clae and Joe had not been without their own woes. One child lost to whooping cough at an early age, one grandson wayward and belligerent, causing his parents and grandparents a great deal of pain. But the others, and there were now fourteen family members in Clae’s family, seemed to be doing fine. One son even had received high honors in his field of medical research.
Missie, who had moved to the large black stove to stir the pot of simmering brown beans, had already marked her sixtieth birthday. Now a grandmother a number of times over and expecting her first great-grandchild, Missie did not look her years. The West had been good to Missie and her Willie. Clark joked that they had populated one county all on their own, and it was true that many of the ranches in their area were now run by sons and grandsons. One of “the boys” had taken over the homespread. Willie maintained, with a glint in his eyes and pride in his voice, that all he was allowed to do now was boring paper work.
But most of Missie’s family members, thirty-seven in number, had not been able to make the long trip east. Only Willie and Missie and their Melissa—who had traveled all the way from the West Coast where she lived with her husband involved in coastal shipping—had come.
Marty could hear her son Clare’s voice from the back porch, insisting that he was enjoying the chance to “put his feet up” since retirement. He had moved with his wife, Kate, from their farm into the little town nearby, letting Dack take over. Marty smiled as she thought about it. Why, she often wondered aloud to Clark, if he liked retirement so much, did he drive back and forth from town to the farm all the time just to “check things out”? Marty guessed that Clare’s real reason for leaving the farm was Kate. She was badly crippled with arthritis, and had they remained on the farm she would have continued to plant her big garden and insist on carrying her “share of the load.” Marty knew that Clare worried about Kate.
Clark and Marty were used to having Clare and Kate with their sons, Dan, Davey, Dack, and Stan and their families around for family gatherings. The sons and their seventeen offspring had not scattered far from home. But their daughter, Amy Jo, was another matter. She had moved to a large city on the West Coast so she could pursue her work in art. “The most beautiful city in the world,” according to Amy Jo. Her rancher husband had retired, sold his spread, and dabbled in real estate while Amy Jo dabbled in oils. They had two children, neither of whom had shown any bent toward their mother’s artistic gifts.
Son Arnie and his wife, Anne, had also always lived nearby. Arnie kidded Clare about quitting work “to loaf.” He insisted that Clare would be healthier and happier if he was out pitching hay or cleaning the barn. But Marty knew that Arnie understood the difficult choice Clare had made. She wished that Arnie himself didn’t have to work so hard. He was getting a definite stoop to his shoulders. Arnie’s family now totaled twenty-two. Silas, John, and Abe all worked area farms. Trudy and Anne Louise had also married farmers.
Clark and Marty’s daughter Ellie and husband, Lane, had shared the trip home by train with Missie and Willie. None of their offspring, and there were now twenty-nine counting in-laws and little ones, were able to make the trip with them.
Ellie was still slim and lithe, though her once-golden locks had now turned a silvery white. Premature gray, she called it. But Missie smiled and teased that Ellie was old enough to have earned her gray hair, already being a grandmother. Ellie’s family included nine grandchildren.
Luke, the Davises’ youngest son, was their town’s very busy physician. He had just built Abbie a new house. His office was now apart from his home, a fact that Abbie declared was only about twenty years late in happening. Poor Abbie had been subject to knocks on the door at all hours of the day and night. Their son Aaron had married a local girl and settled down to run the community’s funeral parlor, a fact that caused a good many smiles of amusement and made Doc Luke and his mortician son the butt of many friendly jokes. Thomas had chosen to follow his father in medicine, so he was off getting his training. Daughter Ruth Ann married the town pharmacist, making another prime target for the local wits. “If ya go see Doctor Luke, he sends ya off to his son-in-law fer medicines, an’ if thet don’t work, ya end up his son’s client,” people ribbed, always seeming to think that the little joke was original with them. Georgia was a bookkeeper at the mayor’s office, still single but much pursued. Clark maintained that she so enjoyed keeping the local young men in a tizzy that she would never settle on one of them. Luke and Abbie and their family had, over the years, been frequent visitors for Sunday dinner at the Davis family farmhouse. On this special occasion, only Thomas and his new bride were missing.
Belinda, Clark and Marty’s last, had married Drew Simpson and also lived in the nearby town with her lawyer husband and five children. Having made her appearance in the family when Marty was past forty, Belinda was still considered a young woman, not yet having reached her own fortieth birthday. Her children, younger than the other cousins, had not been raised with the rest of the bustling pack but were young enough to be given special pampering by all the older cousins.
Belinda’s Clara already had herself a beau. Marty silently hoped that the courtship would not move too quickly. There was no reason for Clara, only eighteen, to rush into the duties of homemaker. Rodney, following closely in age, was an industrious and capable student. His father, Drew, took great pleasure in the accomplishments of his eldest son. Virginia, named after the lady that Belinda long ago had nursed and come to love as dearly as a grandmother, was thirteen, followed by Daniel, age twelve. Belinda often quipped that she had her offspring in pairs, as close together as they could be without being t