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Harvest House Publishers - BJ Hoff

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140 pages

English

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In the first book of the Mountain Song Legacy series readers step into a small Kentucky coal mining town in the late 1800's where hope is found in the hearts of two young girlsthe vibrant, red-headed Maggie MacAuley and her fragile friend Summer Rankin. When Jonathan Stuart, the latest in a succession of educators, actually wants to continue teaching in the one-room schoolhouse, then Maggie and Summer know that he is special. So when Jonathan's cherished flute is stolen, the girls try to find a way to restore music to his life.Sorrow and joy follow in the days to come, and through it all Maggie, Jonathan, and a community rediscover the gifts of faith, friendship, and unwavering love.

Sujets

Historical romance

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Publié par	Harvest House Publishers
Date de parution	01 janvier 2006
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780736934497
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 verses used in the main text are from the King James Version of the Bible. Scripture verses in What God Says About Hope are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
The verse appearing on p. 226 is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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.
Published in association with the literary agency of Janet Kobobel Grant, Books Such, 4788 Carissa Avenue, Santa Rosa, California 95405.
A portion of this novel was previously published as The Penny Whistle .
Cover photo Rubberball Productions/Index Stock Imagery; Thinkstock/Index Stock Imagery
Cover by Koechel Peterson Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnes
A DISTANT MUSIC
Copyright 2006 by BJ Hoff
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoff, B. J., 1940-
A distant music / B.J. Hoff.
p. cm. - (The mountain song legacy ; bk. 1)
Portions of this novel previously published as The penny whistle -T.p. verso.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7369-1404-8 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-7369-1404-8 (pbk.)
1. Teacher-student relationships-Fiction. 2. Coal mines and mining-Fiction. 3. Poor families-Fiction. 4. Sick children-Fiction. 5. Mountain life-Fiction. 6. Musicians-Fiction. 7. Kentucky-Fiction. I. Hoff, B. J. 1940- Penny whistle. II. Title. III. Series.
PS3558.O34395D57 2006

813 .54-dc22
2005020466
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
06 07 08 09 10 11 12 / BC-MS / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue: When the Music Stopped
One: Jonathan s Children
Two: The Collection
Three: Waiting for Matthew
Four: A Jar of Wishes
Five: Maggie and Summer
Six: Faced with a Painful Decision
Seven: Disappointment
Eight: A Heavyhearted Night
Nine: Maggie and the Angel Touch
Ten: Predators
Eleven: An Unlikely Hero
Twelve: Two Are Better Then One
Thirteen: Heartsong, Heartache
Fourteen: Pity the Children
Fifteen: What Kind of Man?
Sixteen: When Hope Falters
Seventeen: A Meeting of the School Board
Eighteen: An Exchange of Pain
Nineteen: Kenny s Quandary
Twenty: A Reluctant Lie
Twenty-One: Maggie in Charge
Twenty-Two: Secret Threats
Twenty-Three: Going On
Twenty-Four: In Praise of Good Men
Twenty-Five: The Beginning of a Plan
Twenty-Six: Night Wind
Twenty-Seven: The Cabin
Twenty-Eight: In the Woods
Twenty-Nine: A Call for Heroes
Thirty: A Future and a Hope
Thirty-One: A Surprise for Mr. Stuart
Thirty-Two: A New Song
Epilogue: Homecoming
What God Says About Hope
About the Author
Harvest House Publishers: Fiction for Every Taste and Interest
For Dana and Jessie,
who taught me everything I know
about how young girls think and how young women
make their mother proud time and time again
And for Jim,
who could teach even Jonathan Stuart
a few things about what it means to be a good man .
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Nick Harrison, Carolyn McCready, Kim Moore, and all those at Harvest House who played such a vital role in breathing new life into Maggie MacAuley and the lovable inhabitants of Skingle Creek.
And, as always, with appreciation to Janet Grant, sainted agent and patient friend.
To My Readers:
A few years ago I wrote a novella entitled The Penny Whistle . It was a story about two young girls, Maggie MacAuley and Summer Rankin, and their efforts to restore the hope and the health of their beloved teacher, Jonathan Stuart. Ever since the publication of The Penny Whistle , I ve continued to hear from many of you, asking for the rest of the story.
What a gift it is to any writer to realize that readers have come to love the characters in her book so much that they want to know more about them. To my great pleasure, I can now thank you for your patience and respond to your requests for more. With this new book, you re about to renew your acquaintance with Maggie, Summer, Jonathan Stuart, and many others in the small Kentucky mining town of Skingle Creek. And I m happy to tell you that A Distant Music isn t so much the rest of the story as it is the beginning of the rest of the story. I hope you enjoy it there s more to come.
God s blessing upon you all,
Prologue
When the Music Stopped
The harp that once through Tara s halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara s walls
As if that soul were fled.
Thomas Moore

Northeastern Kentucky
November 10, 1892
M aggie MacAuley could pinpoint the exact day when the music stopped in Skingle Creek.
It was the same day some no-account unknown stole Mr. Stuart s silver flute. The same day Mr. Stuart seemed to give up. The day he began to change.
The only schoolteacher who had ever stayed for more than a few months, Jonathan Stuart had arrived fresh from the state university almost six years ago. The town knew little about him, for he never talked much about himself, only that he had grown up in Lexington. How or why he had ended up in a little mining town like Skingle Creek was anyone s guess, but to everyone s surprise, he had settled right in and stayed put.
Maggie had been only six years old when Mr. Stuart came to town, but she could still recollect his first few weeks at the school and how the people of Skingle Creek had wagged their tongues about that new teacher and how he was a different cut, a city fellow. The older students, like Maggie s sisters, Eva Grace and Nell Frances, claimed to have known right from the start that their new teacher was indeed different.
Of course, Eva Grace and Nell Frances were inclined to think they knew just about everything.
If truth were told, not a soul in Skingle Creek-child or grown-up alike-had ever come upon a man like Mr. Stuart.
Maggie figured their teacher must be what was meant by a gentle man. His smile was gentle. His voice was gentle too, and words seemed to fall easy from his tongue. His laugh was quick to come but never rowdy. Even his walk was quiet and unhurried. He had a way of making it seem as though whatever he happened to be doing at any particular moment was the most important thing he had to do all day.
He also had a way of making all the students in the small one-room schoolhouse feel as though they were the most important people in the world. At least in his world. Maggie had never seen Mr. Stuart in a rush, nor had she ever known him to lose his patience with the slower learners. Although he had himself a fine gold watch, he seldom took it out of his vest pocket, except when it came time to change from one class to another or to ring the dismissal bell. If time was of much importance to him, he seldom showed it.
He never raised his voice, not even when Lester Monk-who everyone knew was the pokiest boy to ever set his feet to the floor in the morning-lumbered through his sums or went to stuttering when he tried to read more than two or three words in a row. Mr. Stuart would just smile and nod, as if to encourage Lester to keep on trying, that he was doing fine, and that they had all the time in the world.
Maggie was pretty sure any other teacher would have bawled Lester out something fierce or maybe even smacked his hand with the ruler and made him stand in the dumb corner. But not Mr. Stuart. He treated all his students the same, even Lester.
Eva Grace said he was by far the best teacher they d ever had. Nell Frances disagreed-she always disagreed with their older sister just because Eva Grace was older. And prettier. A lot prettier than either Nell Frances or Maggie herself. Prettier, even, than their mother, who Da said was the best-looking woman in Rowan County.
One thing Maggie s two sisters did agree on was that Mr. Stuart was a great storyteller. And just like every other lesson he taught, his stories almost always had a Point, unlike the tall tales of their Great-Uncle Ruff, whose yarns were known to be the most far-fetched throughout the county.
He was a great one, Mr. Stuart was, for making a Point.
His stories were also crammed with enough excitement to make a body s heart hammer and enough adventure to satisfy even the older boys in the schoolroom. Sometimes he told them stories from the Holy Bible, and Maggie had noticed that he never had to read these stories but seemed to know them all by heart. Sometimes the stories were about animals or people who had lived long ago. Folk tales, Mr. Stuart called them.
But no matter what kind of tale he told, there was always a Point. It wasn t that he would come right out and say what it was. They just knew by the way he would end the story and stand there, watching them with a little smile, that he was looking to see if they had got the Point.
Many of the teacher s stories had to do with God and how He loved people and all the creatures He had made-even toads and spiders, which Maggie thought must take an awful lot of love. Oftentimes, Mr. Stuart s stories seemed to have a Point about being kind to others, even to those who weren t nice to you . Some stories made a Point about gossip. Others were about envy, and how it was wrong to resent folks who had more money and possessions than others.
That particular Point wasn t much of a problem in Skingle Creek. Except