Showing results by author "Ann H. Gabhart" in All Categories

When Darcie and Walter Goodwin hear of a new cholera epidemic sweeping the area, they join the Shakers whose villages seem immune to the disease. It's meant to be a temporary stay, but Walter is killed in a riverboat accident. With no family and no money, Darcie has little choice but to stay with the Shakers. To complicate matters, she is expecting a baby conceived before she and her husband came to the Shaker village. Marital relationships are considered sinful in this celibate community, putting Darcie in a unique - and lonely - position.

Kentucky packhorse librarian Tansy Calhoun doesn't mind the rough trails and long hours as she serves her Appalachian mountain community during the Great Depression. Yet she longs to find love like the heroines in the books she loves. When a charming writer comes to town, she thinks she might have found it—or is the perfect man actually closer than she thinks?

It is 1964, and 14-year-old Jocie Brooke is about to have an unforgettable summer. Her father has found a new love, her hippie sister is about to have a baby, and her aunt is finally pleasurable to live with. But when a Black family from Chicago moves into the quiet hamlet of Holly County, Kentucky, Jocie finds herself befriending a boy whom some townspeople shun.

In 1933 Louisville, Kentucky, even the ongoing economic depression cannot keep Piper Danson's parents from insisting on a debut party. After all, their fortune came through the market crash intact, and they've picked out the perfect suitor for their daughter. Braxton Crandall can give her the kind of life to which she's accustomed. The only problem? This is not the man - or the life - she really wants.

Francine Howard has her life all mapped out until the soldier she planned to marry at WWII's end writes to tell her he's in love with a woman in England. Devastated, Francine seeks a fresh start in the Appalachian Mountains, training to be a nurse midwife for the Frontier Nursing Service. Deeply affected by the horrors he witnessed at war, Ben Locke has never thought further ahead than making it home to Kentucky. His future shrouded in as much mist as his beloved mountains, he's at a loss when it comes to envisioning what's next for his life.

Charlotte Vance is a young woman who knows what she wants. But when the man she planned to marry joins the Shakers - a religious group that does not marry - she is left dumbfounded. And when her father brings home a new wife who is young enough to be Charlotte's sister, it is more than she can bear. With the country - and her own household--on the brink of civil war, this pampered gentlewoman hatches a plan to avoid her new stepmother and win back her man by joining the Shaker community at Harmony Hill.

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 sanatorium, and her girls' experience in an orphanage during her illness. At Meadowland, hope blooms as their past troubles become rich soil in which their faith can grow.

Though 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 her to marry him. Just like that.

Kallie Mae Bertram has harbored two dreams since childhood: to learn to read and to one day marry Quinn Spencer. But her first dream slipped away after her little sister died of a fever and her mother passed in childbirth. Kallie promised to care for the baby and her younger brother, which meant putting aside her own desires in order to keep her family together. But then a Moonlight School for adults offers Kallie hope of finally fulfilling that goal.

At twenty-two, Elena Bradford has never met a man who made her consider marriage. But when her father dies and leaves the family deeply in debt, Elena becomes their only hope. Her mother uses their last funds to take Elena and her younger sister to Graham Springs, Kentucky, where people find healing by drinking the mineral spring water and healthy recreation through the many daily activities--including dances almost every evening.

It is 1936 and Kate Merritt works hard to keep her family together. Her father has slipped into alcoholism, her mother is trying to come to grips with their dire financial situation, and her sisters seem to remain blissfully oblivious to all of it. Kate could never have imagined that a dirty, abandoned little girl named Lorena Birdsong would be just what her family needs.

In the autumn of 1941, rumors of war whisper through Rosey Corner. The town practically vibrates with apprehension, as if it is holding its breath. But for Kate Merritt, it seems life is letting out a prolonged sigh. As Kate watches her sister marry the man Kate has loved since she was fifteen, her heart is silently breaking. And even the attentions of Jay Tanner, the handsome best man, can’t draw her interest. Then suddenly, Pearl Harbor changes everything and Kate finds herself drawn to Jay in surprising ways. Could she truly be in love with him? And if he enlists, will she ever see him again?

Carlyn Kearney spends two lonely years not knowing whether to mourn or to hope after she receives word from the Union Army that her husband is missing. When the war ends without further word, Carlyn finds herself penniless, in debt, and forced from her home. With nowhere else to go, she seeks refuge at the Shaker village of Harmony Hill. The Shakers profess peace through simple living, but to Carlyn the Shaker life seems anything but simple.

Orphaned in the cholera epidemic of 1833, Adria Starr was cared for by a slave named Louis, a man who stayed in Springfield, Kentucky, when anyone with means had fled. A man who passed up the opportunity to escape his bondage and instead tended to the sick and buried the dead. A man who, 12 years later, is being sold by his owners despite his heroic actions. Now 19, Adria has never forgotten what Louis did for her. She's determined to find a way to buy Louis's freedom. But in 1840s Kentucky, she'll face an uphill battle.

Jocie Brooke has never wanted for love, despite the fact that she hardly remembers her mother. Jocie's father, preacher David Brooke, has done his best to be both father and mother to his daughter. Even Jocie's spinster great-aunt, Love, who's slowly going senile, cares for Jocie in her own stern way. But in their small town of Hollyhill, Kentucky, painful secrets lie just beneath the surface, and inquisitive spirits discover surprising truths. There's a reason why Aunt Love hides behind black dresses and a stoic countenance.

In 1881, Jacci Reed is only five years old when a man attempts to kidnap her from the steamboat her mother, Irena, works on. Badly wounded during the confrontation, Irena takes Jacci aboard the Kingston Floating Palace, a showboat tied up beside them. There, Jacci's actor grandfather tends to her mother and Jacci gets a first taste of the life she will come to lead. Fifteen years later, Jacci is an actress aboard the Kingston Floating Palace, and largely contented with her adopted family of actors, singers, and dancers.

WWII is over, the boys are coming home, and Kate and her sisters are ready to pursue the plans they put on hold. Will their dreams come true?

The summer of 1964 certainly was eventful, but it's nothing compared to what's coming to the Brooke family and to Hollyhill, Kentucky. David finally gets up the nerve to pop the question to Leigh, and wedding plans are in the making. But the past is coming to call on many in Hollyhill, threatening to destroy the relationships that everyone thought were so strong. Two people - one David thought was gone for good and the other no one's ever heard of - are making their way to the small town and promise trouble.

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. In the Shaker village, Lacey’s still married but living in a community that believes marriage is a sin.

Some dreams were meant to come true. Jessamine Brady has been in the Shaker Village for half her young life, but in spite of how she loves her sisters there, she struggles to conform to the strict rules. Instead she entertains dreams of the world outside. When Tristan Cooper seems to step out of those dreams to entice her into the forbidden realm beyond the Shaker Village, her life turns upside down. Will Jessamine be able to survive the storms of the world? Or will she retreat back to the peace of Harmony Hill?