Journal Entries

I just got back last night from staying with an Old Order Amish family all weekend. Seven children. One litter of kittens. One litter of unexpected puppies. Fifteen horses. Two milk cows. A five-year-old in a bonnet handing me a baby bottle filled with milk to feed a tiny kitten. Sitting with oil lamps in the evening, the five-year-old on my lap, three other little barefoot girls iin choring kerchiefs all fascinated with me NOT because I am a published author but because I have actually been to visit Laura Ingalls Wilder’s house in Missouri!!!! (They are rabid Little House fans) An older sister sewed a new dress on a treadle sewing machine in the corner, another older sister pressed her new dress (there’s a family wedding coming up) with a cast-iron iron she heated on the stove, the mother sat in a rocking chair reading a recently published book of Amish history I had brought her as a hostess gift. Not all Amish families are alike. From what I have read, not all Amish families are emotionally healthy. But what I saw this past weekend was a family at peace with themselves, with their world, and with God. Not […]

I am being told by those who know about these things, that my second historical is not strictly a sequel, nor is it a series. I’m new at this, and did not know the distinction. So here’s a little more information about the not-a-sequel, not-a-series book I just finished writing:-) It is set in 1871 Michigan, the year of a terrible drought. My hero is a widowed dirt farmer with five children. My heroine is an immigrant girl from Sweden by the name of Ingrid. It is a story of survival and enduring love. The sequel part comes in when the farmer is forced to seek work in one of the lumber camps and ends up in Robert Foster’s. The reader gets to see how Katie and Robert are doing, but the book isn’t ABOUT Katie and Robert. So–this is not technically a sequel. And it is not a series because each book is a stand-alone novel. Now that that’s all clear, I think I’ll go read the dictionary so I won’t make that sort of mistake again:-)

It was nearly ten o’clock. My husband picked up the telephone, checked the caller ID and said, “It’s Naomi,” (not her real name.) I’m not a big telephone talker, but there was a smile on my face as I reached for the telephone. Naomi has become one of my favorite people. “Are you busy?” she asked in her soft, lyrical Pennsylvania Dutch accent. Of course I was busy. I’m always busy. But never too busy to talk with a good friend, especially one who has taken the time to walk out to an unheated phone shanty in the middle of January! I got caught up on her daughter’s troubled pregnancy and how the other Amish were bringing in food and helping with housework so the daughter could be on complete bed rest. Naomi described the pregnancy problem in some detail. She’s a midwife with forty years of experience and has dealt with troubled pregnancies before. As we got caught up on each others lives, I marveled at the miles, (she lives in a different state) different customs and vastly different lives that lay between us–and yet how easily we have connected–even on the first day I met her. We discussed […]