Ann H Gabhart

It is 1936 and Kate Merritt works hard to keep her family together. Her father slowly slips into alcoholism and his business suffers during the Great Depression. As her mother tries to come to grips with their situation and her sisters seem to remain blissfully oblivious to it, it is Kate who must shoulder the emotional load. Who could imagine that a dirty, abandoned little girl named Lorena Birdsong would be just what the Merritts need?

It is 1844 and Lacey Bishop's life is a tangled mess. Estranged from her own family, at age 16 she went to work for a preacher and his wife. When his wife died, the preacher convinced Lacey that the only decent thing to do was to marry him. That way she could continue to act as mother to the little girl who was left on his doorstop. But Lacey never expected he would decide to take them all off to a Shaker village.

Jessamine Brady loves her Shaker sisters and brothers, but can't stop imagining life and love in the outside world.

"If any place on God's earth was designed to help one heal, it is Meadowland. Surely here, at her brother-in-law's Kentucky farm, Rose and her daughters can recover from the events of the recent past - the loss of her husband during the 1918 influenza epidemic, her struggle with tuberculosis that required a stay at a sanitarium, and her girls' experience in an orphanage during her illness. At Meadowland, hope blooms as their past troubles become rich...

Jocie Brooke, preacher David Brooke, and Jocie's spinster Great-aunt Love seek to understand painful secrets, lost loves, and surprising truths in this heartwarming Southern tale set in the 1960s. The past issues of several citizens in a small town--the pastor, his daughter, his maiden aunt, and a coworker--all converge in this contemporary novel.

"While the century began with such promise, it is 1910 when Mira Dean's hopes of being a wife and mother are dashed to pieces. Her fiancé dead from tuberculosis, Mira resigns herself to being a spinster schoolteacher -- until Gordon Covington shows up. No longer the boy she knew from school, Gordon is now a preacher who is full of surprises. First, he asks Mira to come to Sourwood in eastern Kentucky to teach at his mission school. Second, he asks...