Read An Amish Family Reunion Online
Authors: Mary Ellis
An Amish Family Reunion
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture verses are taken from the
Holy Bible
, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189 USA. All rights reserved.
Cover by Garborg Design Works, Savage, Minnesota
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.
AN AMISH FAMILY REUNION
Copyright © 2012 by Mary Ellis
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellis, Mary,
An Amish family reunion / Mary Ellis.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7369-4487-8 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-4488-5 (eBook)
1. Amish—Fiction. 2. Family reunions—Fiction. 3. Life change events—Fiction. 4. Partnership—Fiction.
5. Holmes County (Ohio)—Fiction. 6. New York (State)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3626.E36A85 2012
813'.6—dc22
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
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 / LB-NI / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Can a Young Amish Widow Find Love?
What Happens When an Amish Girl’s Prince Charming Is an Englischer?
Can a Loving Amish Woman Be a Refuge for a Wounded Soul?
Love Blooms in Unexpected Places
We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love
.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them
.
And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect
.
So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment
,
but we can face him with confidence because
we live like Jesus here in this world
.
1 J
OHN
4:16-17
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Carol Lee Shevlin for welcoming me and providing my home away from home, Simple Pleasures Bed & Breakfast.
Thanks to Rosanna Coblentz of the Old Order Amish for her delicious recipes and expert
Deutsch
translations.
Thanks to my agent, Mary Sue Seymour, who had faith in me from the beginning; to my lovely proofreader, Mrs. Joycelyn Sullivan; to my editor, Kim Moore; and to the wonderful staff at Harvest House Publishers.
Thanks to my friends Donna, Patty, Peggy, Cheryl, Nilda, Joni, and Carol—exemplary grandmothers, every one of them. And to my own dear Grandma Eles, who loved me with her whole heart, even though she barely spoke a word of English.
And thanks be to God—all things in this world are by His hand.
Brothers Simon and Seth Miller married the Kline sisters, Julia and Hannah
Emma,
daughter of Simon and Julia
—James Davis,
husband of Emma
—Jamie and Sam,
sons of Emma and James
Matthew,
son of Simon and Julia
—Martha (Hostetler),
wife of Matthew
—Noah and Mary,
son and daughter of Matthew and Martha
Leah,
daughter of Simon and Julia
—Jonah Byler,
husband of Leah
Henry,
son of Simon and Julia
Phoebe,
daughter of Seth, stepdaughter of Hannah
Ben,
son of Seth and Hannah
NE
Winesburg, Ohio
Y
ou would think that a person might be able to enjoy some peace and quiet on a Sunday afternoon. After all, it was the Sabbath—a day of rest. Yet Phoebe Miller found herself hiding behind a tree to escape from her family. There were just so many of them. Living next door to Aunt Julia and Uncle Simon guaranteed plenty of drop-in visits, impromptu potluck suppers, and more unsolicited advice than any seventeen-year-old girl needed. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her family, because she certainly did. She simply needed more alone time than most people.
Holding her breath, Phoebe stood stock-still until Uncle Simon headed into the barn in search of her father and Aunt Julia entered the house looking for her
mamm
. Hannah wasn’t her mother by blood, but she had earned the title during the past twelve years of bandaging scrapes, helping with math homework, and remaining near while Phoebe suffered with the flu on long winter nights. She couldn’t remember her birth mother anymore. She had been only five when an impatient driver in a fast-moving truck decided to pass on a blind curve. It didn’t hurt much anymore. She had Hannah, her
daed
, and her little brother to love. They were all she needed…except, perhaps, for a little personal solitude.
Phoebe sucked in her gut as ten-year-old Ben ran across the yard, chasing his dog, who was chasing a rubber ball. When the two ducked under a fence into the cornfield, she ran pell-mell in the opposite direction, clutching her box of pencils and sketch pad tightly. She dared not look back for fear some cousin would be waving frantically from the porch. This time she didn’t stop to watch baby lambs nursing from their mothers or to pick a fistful of wild trilliums for her windowsill. On through the sheep pasture she ran until she reached her favorite drawing spot—an ancient stone wall constructed by long ago pioneers of Holmes County. Phoebe doubted these early settlers had been Amish. Not too many Amish men would take the time to painstakingly stack flat rocks just so to form a long fence line, not when dozens of tall trees fell over in the woods each winter that could easily be split into fence rails. And not when stampeding cows spooked by thunder, or marauding sheep needing no reason whatsoever to bolt, could knock the entire wall down within minutes. That was probably why this twenty-yard section was all that remained. But it was all Phoebe needed.
Settling comfortably on a smooth flat stone, she gazed over acres of rolling pasture, lush with thick clover and alive with honeybees and hummingbirds attracted to morning glories. Those climbing vines would entwine her if she sat too long. Beyond this pasture, where
mamm
’s beloved sheep frolicked and capered like small children, lay alfalfa and cornfields, peach and apple orchards, and stately pines in the distance. Like sentinels, they guarded the property line between their farm and the westerly neighbor, while a pond and lowland bog separated them from Uncle Simon and Aunt Julia to the east.
Phoebe turned to a fresh page in her oversized tablet and selected a charcoal pencil from the box. What would she draw today? Horses nibbling on fresh green grass? Sunlight glinting off dewy treetops at dawn, while the rest of the land remained cloaked in darkness? It was well past midday, but Phoebe had witnessed the dawn enough times to remember what it looked like. Maybe their three-story bank barn with open hayloft doors against a stark backdrop of pristine, unbroken snow? Everyone loved the serenity that could be found within a winter landscape. It didn’t matter that it was May—and an exceptionally warm day at that. A good artist worth her salt possessed a memory capable of retaining visual imagery until the moment she re-created those images on canvas…or in her case, on a sheet of white paper.
“I thought I would find you up here.”