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

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.

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.

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.

Drawn to the enduring truths of Kim Vogel Sawyer’s gentle stories, fans and critics alike have fallen in love with the novels of this ACFW Book of the Year Award winner. Set in 1888 Kansas, A Hopeful Heart tells the story of a young woman from Back East who’s convinced she must settle for a life that’s second best. But as she struggles to overcome the challenges of a new faith and the hardships of frontier life, she may discover that—for her—the best is yet to come.

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.

Since an accident left her father unable to work, Jennie Ward has taken on the demanding task of inspecting the isolated seven-mile wooden pipeline that supplies water to Cañon City, Colorado. Despite her responsibilities, Jennie harbors dreams of going back to school and longs for something even simpler: a friend. One day, in a moment of impulsive and seemingly hopeless prayer, she asks God for companionship.

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.

Desperate to simply survive, Birdie Clarkson was driven to a life in a house of ill repute. Now she longs only for escape. So when Reverend Isaiah Overly and his son, Ephraim, appear and offer a better life, she jumps at the chance. Ignoring the furious raging of the madam, Birdie climbs into the back of the preacher’s wagon. The men take her to Hope Hill, the haven the reverend and his wife, Ophelia, founded so women like Birdie can be taught skills to help them rise above their pasts.

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.

After reading about the popularity in New York of the Frauenverein, a benevolent society dedicated to caring for German widows and orphans, the women of a Mennonite community in Alexandertol, Kansas, eagerly organize their own group and begin to identify the individuals most in need of their assistance. Schoolteacher Augusta Dyck is particularly grateful to have meaningful work to occupy her time when classes are closed for planting season, and she's certain the quiet and reserved widower Konrad Rempel and his two young twin boys should be high on the list of people to receive help.

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....

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.

As three friends who grew up in the same orphanage head off to college together, they each harbor a special plan for the future. Libby Conley hopes to become a famous journalist. Pete Leidig believes God has called him to study to become a minister. And Bennett Martin plans to pledge a fraternity, find a place to belong, and have as much fun as possible. But as tensions rise around the world on the brink of World War I, the friends' differing aspirations and opinions begin to divide them, as well.

Twenty-one-year-old Rebecca Hardin is determined to help provide for her family, living a hardscrabble life in 1910 in the Southern Kentucky hills. Her brother, Andy, died when he became lost in a cave five years earlier, and Rebecca feels responsible for his death because she'd told him to "go, get lost". The best wages at Mammoth Cave are earned by the guides, who receive a salary plus tips from the guests. But only men are allowed to be guides, so Rebecca cuts her hair, dons some of Andy's clothes, and introduces herself as Reb to the estate manager.

With Pap hauled off to the state penitentiary, Bettina finally feels safe. Living with Nanny Fay Tucker, working as a packhorse librarian, and being courted by Shay Leeson is a life beyond anything she'd imagined. And it's only going to get better. Because soon she'll be an honorary auntie to her best friend Addie's baby, and--for sure not much longer--she'll exchange vows with Shay and become his wife. Things in Boone's Hollow couldn't be rosier...until she gets word that the governor suspended Pap's sentence and he'll be coming back sooner than she expected. Shay wants to marry her real ...

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.

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.

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.

As a widow who never had children of her own, Hester Haak never imagined she'd open her home in Kansas to not just one but three kids from the bustling streets of New York. But when the Children's Aid Society unexpectedly allows her to take two sisters and a young boy her care, she rises to the challenge. Hester is determined to provide a safe, loving home for these children, even as the shadow of them potentially leaving looms over her.

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.