A Blessing for Miriam
Read A Blessing for Miriam Online
Authors: Jerry S. Eicher
| A Blessing for Miriam |
| Jerry S. Eicher |
In the second book of bestselling author Jerry S. Eicher's new Land of Promise series, Miriam Yoder is looking forward to her wedding day with Wayne Yutzy. But when beautiful Esther Swartz arrives to care for her ailing grandmother, Miriam is wary of Wayne's past relationship with Esther.
When storms rip through the small Amish community in Oklahoma, Miriam's
daett
arrives to help in the rebuilding efforts. Under pressure from Miriam's
daett
the relationship with Wayne is upended, leaving Miriam to wonder if she must now build her new life as a single Amish woman.
Book two in the Land of Promise series
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
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, is entirely coincidental.
A BLESSING FOR MIRIAM
Copyright © 2015 Jerry S. Eicher
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eicher, Jerry S.
A blessing for Miriam / Jerry S. Eicher.
pages cm. — (Land of promise ; book 2)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5881-3 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5882-0 (eBook)
1. Amish—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3605.I34B57 2015
813'.6—dc23
2014021856
All rights reserved.
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Contents
A Checklist of Jerry Eicher’s Harvest House Books
T
he flickering flames from the kerosene lamp danced on the bedroom wall as Miriam Yoder opened the letter from her
mamm.
She carefully pressed the fold creases out on the bed quilt. A letter from Possum Valley was an anticipated and blessed event, so Miriam had waited until they’d finished the supper dishes in Aunt Fannie’s kitchen before she allowed herself this luxury. She focused on
Mamm
’s handwriting.
My dearest Miriam,
Greetings from home. We do so miss you, and think often of your life on the plains of Oklahoma. I hope all is going well with your school-teaching job and, of course, your relationship with young Wayne Yutzy. You’ll have to bring him home sometime soon. We all look forward to meeting him, although from your description and Shirley’s report when she arrived back in Possum Valley, there’s no doubt in our minds that
we will fully approve of the young man. Your life is such a blessing to us and those around you, and also to the Lord, I’m sure.
We’re all doing well health-wise, and for this we’re thankful. Beyond that, I wish I had only light and cheerful news to share, but I don’t. Our hearts ache for Shirley. I fear she’s taken a turn for the worse. After baby Anna was born and Shirley came back to Possum Valley, we so hoped she’d be different. For a time it was so. Shirley seemed to have learned and grown from her time in Oklahoma. Why she decided to come back, I never could understand. The lessons in humility and virtuous living were exactly what she needed, but the
gut
lessons didn’t last long.
Now it’s early spring here, when life is all fresh and blooming outside, but my heart is anything but glad. I tremble to tell you this, Miriam, but Shirley went out with Jonas Beachy two nights last week, and that wasn’t even on the weekend. You know how we feel about Jonas. A Mennonite boy would be bad enough, but Jonas is worse than either the Mennonites or the
Englisha
because his family left our community years ago. That church his dad runs now is awful strange—if one can believe the rumors. I tell myself that the children of others in the community have done worse in their
rumspringa
time than Shirley. I also comfort myself that she’s only eighteen. Maybe she’ll grow out of this phase. Maybe my hopes were too high after you and the two oldest boys turned out so well. I know one cannot expect the same thing from all of one’s children.
Miriam laid the letter aside and sat up on the bed. The letter still had another page, but she needed to catch her breath. The news
of Shirley’s fresh disobedience wasn’t too much of a shock. There had been hints in
Mamm
’s letters since late last fall. What disturbed Miriam the most was the line that she herself had “turned out so well.”
Mamm
and
Daett
still didn’t know about her secret. Miriam had never told them the whole truth about what Mr. Bland had left her in his will. They knew that the
Englisha
man she used to work for had given her his farm at his passing, but that was all. They didn’t know about the money…the two million dollars.
Why had she kept the money hidden? She’d always been the
gut
girl at home. Even her
rumspringa
time had been a mild experiment in a few gatherings among the Possum Valley Amish youth. Why had she kept this secret from
Mamm
and
Daett
? Was she afraid
Daett
wouldn’t bless her because of how he felt about money, let alone large sums of it?
Miriam pushed the dark-blue drapes aside from the bedroom window and looked over the spread of Uncle William’s commercial greenhouse. In the daylight hours the place bustled with business. Wayne Yutzy, the handsome young man she was promised to, worked there. It had been back in September when he’d asked her to marry him and she’d accepted. When she then told him of her inheritance from Mr. Bland, he’d taken it in stride, much to her relief. She hadn’t been able to bear carrying the secret alone any longer.
Miriam let the drapes flutter from her hand. What was the real reason she’d never told
Mamm
and
Daett
about the two million dollars? The answer to that wasn’t too difficult:
Daett’
s strong feelings about the unrighteousness of money and what the possession of it did to people. “The heart must never be set on riches,”
Daett
said often. “The Lord gives no grace to those who love money.”