Introduction

Quite by accident, Sarah King has fallen in love. But this love is forbidden, and could cost her everything she holds dear.

Tucked into the majesty of Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountains is a garden Sarah King has been nurturing for years. She never feels more alive than when she is alone with her thoughts and her Creator among the delicate rows of plants. But then duty calls her away from her beloved garden and into a world she knows little about.

Grant Williams, a handsome young veterinarian, has left the city to open a rural practice among the Amish. Within minutes of meeting shy but feisty Sarah King, he is captivated by her.

As their feelings grow for one another, Sarah insists they can never be together. Marrying Grant would mean being uprooted from her home, her family, and her community. Throughout the cold Pennsylvania winter, with her garden tucked away until spring, Sarah begins crafting a quilt that illustrates her pain. Can anything lasting blossom from a love that's forbidden?

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Excerpt

Chapter 1
The King Farm
Pine Creek, Pennsylvania
eighteen years later
Sarah King passed the mounded dish of mashed potatoes to
her older sister, Chelsea, then caught up the bowls of boiled
turnips and fried apples to bring to the table. It was nice to have
Chelsea visiting. It was her first long visit home since her wedding
to John Kemp five months earlier, and having her there certainly
helped when it came to feeding her three brothers. Twenty-yearold
Sarah felt that being the youngest of five was not always easy,
especially when spring planting came around and the boys were
ravenous from working the fields from sunup until dark.
Sarah caught her mother’s approving eye at the food-laden
table and slipped into her own place on the long bench at her
father’s left hand. She folded her hands into the lap of her apron
and bowed her head. The general rumble of male voices ceased as
her father began to pray.
“Der Herr sie gedankt for this food and for those who have
labored over it, from the fields to the table. Amen.”
There was a chorus of amens, and the boys dove for the food.
“Ach, I nearly forgot . . .” Father held up his hand, and the boys
froze in their scoops with the ladles and spoons. They dropped
them with a low groan when Father bowed his head once more.
“And Der Herr sie gedankt for Chelsea and for the boppli she
carries for John Kemp.”
Sarah smiled. A baby! She should have known, since Chelsea
had been closeted with Mamm and Father for a hurried conference
in the pantry just before serving time. Her brothers patted John on
the back and made good-natured jokes while Chelsea glowed and
met Sarah’s eyes. Sarah knew that many in her Old Order Amish
community did not speak of pregnancies openly, but Father and
Mamm encouraged conversation of all sorts in the privacy of their
home in an effort to keep the family together in spirit and prayer.
Sarah was so excited at the prospect of being an aunt that she
forgot to eat. Father jokingly nudged her arm and set the whole
table laughing at her untouched plate. Sarah joined in the laughter,
though she would not have laughed as outrightly had she been
anywhere but home with her family. She gazed down the table
to the tanned faces of her older brothers and the always-moving
gentle hands of Mamm and thought how blessed she was.
“And,” Father pronounced, startling her, “I think that Sarah
might make the baby quilt for my first grandchild. What do you
say, Sarah?”
Sarah ducked her head at her father’s words. She knew he
only made an innocent suggestion; it was her own insecurity
about extending her creativity beyond her garden that shook her.
She had only attempted one quilt, when she was thirteen, and her Grossmudder King had so criticized her handiwork that she ’d
never picked up a needle again. But the table was waiting for a
reply, and she nodded.
“Jah, I will try.”
Chelsea rose and came around the table to kiss and hug her
sister. “Wunderbaar,” she exclaimed and returned laughing to her
seat.
Sarah smiled and adjusted her hair covering, tucking back the
stray blonde strands that tended to escape at her temples.
Her brother Luke stopped eating and opened his eyes wide in
a comedic manner, which grabbed everyone’s attention.
“Was in der welt, Luke?” Mamm asked in mock exasperation.
“I just thought of something, Mamm!” Luke exclaimed. “Now
that Chelsea is married and working on the Kemp farm, she won’t
be able to run the roadside stand. And it’s supposed to open again
next week! Who will take care of the stand this year?”
The table rumbled in perplexity, and Sarah bit her lip in
thought. The King family roadside stand was no mere plank of
wood on sawhorses. Indeed, Father and the boys had built a fulllength,
open-fronted shed, well shingled against the weather and
able to house many tables of produce, baked goods, and canned
items in the spring and summer as well as baskets of walnuts,
beechnuts, scented pine cones, and bundles of firewood in the
autumn. It was a source of income for the family and was the
most successful of all the roadside stands in the local Amish and
English communities. To spare a boy from the fields would be
unthinkable, and Chelsea was busy on the Kemp farm. Mamm had
all of the housework . . .
“Your mother and I have thought of this, eh, Mama?”
Mamm cleared her throat and folded her cloth napkin before replying. “Jah,” she announced. “Sarah will take over the running
of the stand when it opens again next week.”
The sudden silence around the crowded table did nothing to
ease Sarah’s swimming head as she stared at her mother in confusion.
Father took up the conversation and reached to pat Sarah’s
cold hand in reassurance. “Jah, Sarah will do it.”
Luke laughed aloud—a brief chortle cut short by a glare from
his mother—and then looked apologetically at his younger sister.
“Forgive me, please, Sarah. It’s just that you’re always with
your plants . . . I just thought . . .” His words trailed off and Sarah
felt a quick wash of pity at his floundering.
“It doesn’t matter, Luke. It’s strange for me to think of it
also,” Sarah admitted.
Chelsea spoke up. “Sarah can do it,” she proclaimed stoutly,
so that her father nodded in agreement and a murmur of ascent
went around the table.
“Yes, Sarah, you can.” Father went on, “It is your nature to
hide among the garden plants you love, jah? But there are others
to minister to, a world to understand so you can be sure that you
do not conform to its ways and people. Sarah, there are people to
meet and to serve.”
Sarah nodded, but her heart was thumping and she felt sick to
her stomach.
“Jah, Sarah, perhaps you’ll meet your husband at the stand
this year, unless you marry your old friend Jacob Wyse,” Luke
suggested, then ducked when John Kemp gave him a cuff on the
shoulder.
“What?” Luke asked. “She might.”
Chelsea smiled down the table at her brother. “Maybe it’s you,
Luke King, who should visit the stand . . . You might find a wife!”
Luke flushed as his brothers laughed. It was a common joke
among the family that none of the boys had yet to marry, with
James, the eldest, being nearly twenty-eight. The simple truth was
that there was barely time for courting when they all worked a farm
as large as the one the Lord had provided for the King family.
Despite the laughter around her and her brother’s sincere
apology, Sarah had no time to worry about a husband when faced
with the prospect of dealing with the responsibilities of the stand
and all the strangers who would stop as customers. It was one thing
when the King family hosted church meeting and she could stay
in the background, or at picnics or berry picking when she busied
herself with the younger children. But to deal with a parade of
strangers on her own . . . and Englisch strangers at that. She swallowed
hard at the staggering thought and questioned her fears. She
couldn’t recall any reason for her reticence; she’d only ever known
kindness from those in her community. Yet she was afraid.
She realized that conversation had resumed around the table
and the world was spinning for the others of her family. Her
brother Samuel was speaking.
“There’s been more work done today at the Fisher farm,
Father. I noticed when I was plowing the south end. Soon we’ll
have new neighbors.”
“Yes, we will, and they will be Englisch neighbors.”
There was brief silence around the table, though Sarah couldn’t
quite pick up the threads of conversation from her own miserable
musings.
“It’s a strange thing to think of Englischers working an Amish
farm,” Luke commented and Father raised an admonishing hand.
“It was an Amish farm, but all of the earth belongs to Der
Herr. And I must say that the Englisch may care for the place much better than the Fishers ever did. As our neighbors, we must extend
goodwill and, further, good expectations. You all know this.”
Luke nodded in agreement as Father continued.
“It is good to remind ourselves on occasion—kindness, fairness,
goodwill. All as Der Herr would do Himself and as the
Ordnung instructs.”
“I will make some friendship bread to take to them,” Mamm
murmured. “Perhaps the wife will enjoy the recipe as well.”
“No wife, Mamm.” Father smiled. “Only a single man, a doctor
of veterinary science, and his hired help.”
Chelsea laughed. “Oh no, just what we need in the area . . .
another bachelor to compete with the King brothers.”
“He may well have a hard time of it, though, as a vet and an
Englischer. Everybody loved old Dr. Lapp,” Samuel remarked.
“Jah,” Mamm muttered. “He was a good man. Such a sad loss
for his family.”
Sarah sat quiet and sober. She could find no interest in either
her food or Englisch neighbors with the thought of her new
responsibility at the roadside stand.
Her father leaned close and whispered, “The Lord will help
you, Sarah. You will see.”
She smiled at him, though her hazel eyes were full of unshed
tears.
“Jah, Father. Jah.”
The red sports car made short work of the bumpy dirt driveway
to the Fisher farm, and Dr. Grant Williams grinned in his rearview
mirror at the shocked expression on his housekeeper’s face.
“Are you still with me, Mrs. Bustle?”
“You know that I am, sir. You might ask Mr. Bustle how he’s
feeling, though; he tends to get a bit carsick.”
Grant glanced at the older man seated next to him in the passenger
seat. “Bustle?”
“All is well, sir.”
Grant smiled. The Bustles were the type of old-fashioned
servants and family friends who were rarely, if ever, seen in the
modern world. At nearly a spry sixty-years-old each, they’d been
with him since childhood, since his parents had died, and he loved
them. But nothing could persuade them from ceasing to call him
“sir” or from giving him the formality they believed he deserved
as their employer.
“We ’re here.”
In the half-light of the late spring evening, the three-story red
brick farm estate appeared rather austere, though evidence of a
cheerful renovation existed in the piles of new wood and machinery
that dotted the front lawn. Large fragrant lilac bushes framed
the brick walkway that led to the generous porch, and lightning
bugs flashed like tiny lanterns of goodwill.
Grant helped Mrs. Bustle from the car and waited for her
inevitable comment.
“Looks like it could do with a good cleaning.”
Grant chuckled. He expected them to speak their minds, and
Mrs. Bustle rarely disappointed.
“I asked you both to move with me to this rural mountainous
community from Philadelphia because I couldn’t do this without
you. Whatever you need to get this place going so I can start practicing
. . . well, you just have to let me know.” He was surprised
at the emotion in his voice. At twenty-seven, he was focused
on accomplishing his goals in life, and establishing a veterinary
Sarah's practice in this area was one of his personal benchmarks. His
father had been a medical doctor who was deeply devoted to
the Amish people, and Grant felt it was his legacy to continue in
serving where his father had left off. Although his father left him
enough money in a trust to last two lifetimes, he felt a strange
tightness in his chest as he stared up at the old farmhouse that held
his name on the deed.
“If I may, sir.” Mr. Bustle cleared his throat. “Your parents
would have been proud.”
Grant clapped the older man on the shoulder and then linked
his arms around both of them. “Thank you, both of you.”
Mrs. Bustle sniffed. “Could be I’m going to need a hired girl.
Maybe one of them Amish girls.” She pronounced it Aim-ish, but
Grant didn’t bother to correct her. Everything was new, and it
was late.
“Let’s go in, shall we?” He produced an old-fashioned ring of
keys and helped Mrs. Bustle up the steps. The heavy door swung
open once he’d fumbled with the latch, and he moved to turn on
the newly installed overhead chandelier. Cobwebs and dust were
in heavy residence as well as boot tracks from workers on the
dusty hardwood floors.
“I had to have electricity put in. You remember I told you that
the house was previously owned by the Amish.”
“As much of the land hereabouts is,” Mr. Bustle remarked.
“Yes, we’re ‘strangers in a strange land,’ aren’t we, Bustle?
But I mean to build a life here, a life that will honor my father and
mother—with God’s help, of course.”
“You’ll have to build your bed first, I bet,” Mrs. Bustle
announced, returning from her perusal of a side room.
“That’s why we have clean sheets in the car. I’ll get them now, and you . . .” Grant bent to bestow a quick kiss on Mrs. Bustle ’s
aged cheek. “You will have the first bed we build . . . er, make up.
I’ll be right back.”
He slipped outside into the twilight and noticed the warm,
far-off light from the adjoining Amish farm. There was something
poignant and serene about oil lamps shining through
windows that made him think of home, though his parents had
long been lost to him. He leaned on the low roof of the sports car
and drew a deep breath of the fragrant night air. Life was going
to be different here; he just knew it. He felt a stirring of excitement
in his soul.
... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. In what ways does Sarah know God is speaking to her and helping her make decisions in her life? How does God guide you in your own life?
2. John 5:16-18 says: “So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too, am working.’ For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him;” Do you think Sarah broke the law of not working on the Sabbath when she helped Grant learn to set up his own garden? Was it perhaps in act of service?
3. What vulnerabilites does Grant experience due to the loss of his parents at a young age? How can personal loss ulitimately produce strength in an individual?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Author Kelly Long's bio

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