Showing results by author "Kim Vogel Sawyer" in All Categories

Indentured servant Fanny Beck has been forced to sing for riverboat passengers since she was a girl. All she wants is to live a quiet, humble life with her family as soon as her seven-year contract is over. However, when she discovers that the captain has no intention of releasing her, she seizes a sudden opportunity to escape - an impulse that leads Fanny to a group of enslaved people who are on their own dangerous quest for liberty.

Newlyweds Sean Eagle and Meghan DeFord are no strangers to pain and loss as cold-case detectives. But when a new case hits too close to home, it threatens to pull loose the fragile cords of their young marriage. Sheila Menke was just a girl when her father left and never returned. An investigation revealed he had embezzled enough to start a new life elsewhere, but Sheila could never accept this. Sheila nad Meghan are poised to discover that while earthly fathers may fail, there is one in heaven who is a father to the fatherless.

Suddenly all alone in 1894 Kansas, Summer Steadman can't find the employment she needs to settle near the fresh graves of her husband and four children. Bitter against the Lord and refusing to eat, she collapses in despair. Remembering his own painful loss, godly widower Peter Ollenbuger offers her food and shelter for tutoring his 10-year-old son.

When Meghan DeFord is forced to take a six-week leave-of-absence after a traffic accident, she chooses to spend the time with her grandmother. Meghan has wonderful memories of childhood summers with her Grandma Hazel and anticipates a time of relaxation and filling a scrapbook with pictures of their time together. Meghan's mother arrives unexpectedly and brings her long resentment towards Hazel for her overprotectiveness and near paranoia. During their time together, Hazel confesses her long-held secret....

She left, heavily weighted with secrets. But God reveals all things, in His timing. And He redeems them. Suzanne Zimmerman was only 17 and pregnant when her shamed mother quietly sent her away from their Old Order Mennonite community in Kansas. With her old home, family, and first love firmly behind her, Suzanne moved to Indiana, became a nurse, and raised a daughter, Alexa, on her own. Now, nearly 20 years later, an unexpected letter arrives from Kansas.

Alexa Zimmerman wonders if the Old Order Mennonite community in Arborville, Kansas, will ever fully accept her. Her family roots here aren't what anyone thought when she first arrived, but she is hopeful that her culinary and hospitality skills will win the skeptics over. The bed-and-breakfast she's operating needs to succeed, so Alexa agrees to allow Briley Forrester, the hotshot reporter from Chicago, to stay as a long-term boarder, not knowing his real motives for being among the Plain folk.

Mistaken identity leads to romance, laughter, and second chances in this inspirational historical romance. The Kansas community of Fairland anticipates the arrival of their new minister. Over the past several months, late in 1882, postmistress Grace Cristler has communicated with Reverend Dille via letters, answering his questions about the little town and its members, and developing an affection for the man who pens thoughtful missives.

Anthony and Marty Hirschler are part of an Old Order Mennonite community in Pine Hill, Indiana. The couple has grown apart since a doctor confirmed they would never have children. Marty longs to escape the tight-knit area where large families are valued, and the opportunity to do so arises when her childhood friend, Brooke Spalding, resurfaces with the wild idea of rebuilding a ghost town into a resort community. Brooke hires Anthony to help with the construction, drawing the Hirschlers away from Indiana and into her plan, and then finds herself diagnosed with cancer.

During the Great Depression, city-dweller Addie Cowherd dreams of becoming a novelist and offering listeners the escape that books had given her during her tragic childhood. When her father loses his job, she is forced to take the only employment she can find delivering books on horseback to poor coal-mining families in the hills of Kentucky. But turning a new page will be nearly impossible in Boone's Hollow, where residents are steeped in superstitions and deeply suspicious of outsiders. 

After a New York tenement fire kills their immigrant parents in 1886, Maelle, Mattie, and Molly Gallagher soon find themselves aboard a crowded orphan train - hoping a family will adopt them in Missouri. Despite eight-year-old Maelle's best efforts to keep the young survivors together, they must split up.

With a college diploma safely in hand, 20-year-old Thomas Ollenburger is torn between his Mennonite roots on the Kansas prairie and his affluent life in Boston society - and by romantic entanglements in each world. And now even Heaven seems deaf to questions about his choices of vocation, wife, and home.

Neva Shilling has a heavy load of responsibility while her husband travels to neighboring communities and sells items from his wagon. In his absence, she faithfully runs the Shilling Mercantile, working to keep their business strong as the Depression takes its toll, and caring for their twins. When a wagon pulls up after supper, Neva and her children rush out - and into the presence of the deputy driving a wagon carrying three young children.

Growing up in the foster care system, Jase Edgar always dreamed of one day starting his own family. But his fiancée's untimely death shattered his plans. Moving to Kansas and serving as a youth minister should be a fresh start, but he can't seem to set aside his doubts about God's goodness long enough to embrace his new life. Newly appointed church custodian Lori Fowler is battling her own challenges. 

Set in 1936 Kansas, Where Willows Grow transports listeners to America's drought-stricken heartland as the hopes and dreams of hardworking farmers blow away with the wind. As pregnant Anna Mae and her husband Harley struggle to feed their growing family, Harley travels 100 miles to build a WPA monument. But Anna Mae grows increasingly desperate as months drag on with no word from her husband.

Abigail Brantley grew up in affluence and knows exactly how to behave in high society. But when she is cast from the social registers due to her father's illegal dealings, she finds herself forced into a role she never imagined: tutoring rough Kansas ranchers in the subjects of manners and morals so they can "marry up" with their mail-order brides. Mack Cleveland, whose father was swindled by a mail-order bride, wants no part of the scheme to bring Eastern women to Spiveyville, Kansas, but as time goes by, his heart goes out to the teacher.

Riddled with doubt and lingering regrets, will Suzanne and Paul find strength in God to explore a second chance at love? It wasn't easy to move back to the Old Order Mennonite community from which quiet, responsible Suzanne Zimmerman was shamefully sent away as a pregnant teen. Returning 20 years later to take care of her mother, Suzanne and Alexa - the daughter she raised as her own - have spent months rebuilding relationships with her family.

In A Promise for Spring by ACF Book of the Year novelist Kim Vogel Sawyer, Geoffrey Garrett leaves his 17-year-old fiancée in England while he establishes his Kansas ranch and builds her a proper house. But when he sends for her five years later in 1874, it's clear her feelings have changed far more than his. Despite his desire to marry and her wish to leave, they forge a compromise. If she remains as the ranch's housekeeper until spring, he will pay for her trip back home.

Sadie Wagner has always been devoted to her family. So when her stepfather is injured and can't work, she decides to leave home and accept a position as a clerk at the mercantile in Goldtree, Kansas. Goldtree also offers the opportunity to use her God-given singing talent - though the promised opera house is far different from what she imagined. With her family needing every cent she can provide, Sadie will do anything to keep her job.

A Home in Drayton Valley is a tale of keeping the faith in the face of great uncertainty. In 1880, Tarsie Raines is traveling from New York to Kansas with the Brubachers: Joss, Mary, and their two children. Along the way, tragedy strikes, leaving Tarsie and Joss alone to face an unthinkable crisis - and only God’s love to guide them forward.

The practice of ministering to the widows and orphans is reflected in this story of Christina Willems, a young woman from Kansas, in 1884, who is determined to reopen the poor farm she manages after a fire devastates the property. She finds opposition from many surprising corners but an unlikely ally in a lumber mill owner who wants nothing more than to hold himself aloof from the world and its troubles. Levi Jonnson agrees to take care of one of the poor farm residents, a young blind boy - and in doing so opens himself up to Christina's world in ways he wouldn't have imagined.