The Road Home

Praise for A Quilt for Jenna,  the first book in Patrick E. Craig’s  Apple Creek Dreams series… “Patrick Craig writes with an enthusiasm and a passion that are a joy to read. He deals with romance, faith, love, loss, tragedy, and restoration with equal amounts of elegance, grace, clarity, and power. Everyone should pick up his debut novel in Amish fiction, turn off the phone and computer and TV, and settle in for a good night’s read. Craig’s book is a blessing.” Murray Pura author of The Wings of Morning and Ashton Park “A good storyteller takes a fine story and places it in a setting peppered with enough accurate details to satisfy a native son. Then he peoples it with characters so real we keep thinking we see them walking down the street. A great storyteller takes all that and binds it together with, say, a carefully constructed Rose of Sharon quilt and the wallop of a storm of the century that actually happened. A Quilt for Jenna proves Patrick Craig to be a great storyteller.” Kay Marshall Strom author of the Grace in Africa and Blessings in India trilogies “A touching tale of three people who have lost their way. In A Quilt for Jenna, Patrick Craig deftly contrasts the peaceful Amish lifestyle with the harsh World War II Guadalcanal battlefield, tied together with a lovely message of sacrifice, humility, and forgiveness. I was entranced.” Sarah Sundin award-winning author of With Every Letter     Cover by Cora Graphics—Cora Bignardi—www.coragraphics.it Author photo by William Craig—Craigprographica 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. THE ROAD HOME Copyright © 2014 by Patrick E. Craig Published by P&J Publishing P.O. Box 73 Huston, Idaho 83630   Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publications Data Craig, Patrick E., 1947- The Road Home / Patrick E. Craig ISBN 978-1-7323224-2-4 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-7323224-4-8 (eBook) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retreval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quottions in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America To my wife, Judy, who over our twenty-five years together has shown me that the Lord truly sets the solitary in families Acknowledgments Thanks to Nick Harrison, my editor at Harvest House and the first strong advocate for the Apple Creek Dreams series, and to Steve Laube, for his wisdom and guidance through the sometimes treacherous and always challenging shoals of publishing novels, and for encouraging me to write this series in the first place.   About Patrick E. Craig 357 More Books by Patrick E. Craig 358 A Note from Patrick E. Craig What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together! Charles Dickens  Bleak House When I was a pastor, I once counseled two young people who wanted to get married. She was a Christian, but he was not. Like the character in this story, his name was Jonathan. My wife and I spent many days with this precious young couple, doing our best to share the Lord with Jon, but he seemed impervious to the pressing of the Spirit. One day, Jon and Sherry were telling us about their lives, how they had lived in so many different places and done many different (often wild and dangerous) things before finally coming to California and meeting—by coincidence, they said. Suddenly something occurred to me. I drew a rough map of the United States on a piece of paper and had Jon and Sherry put a dot on all the places they had lived before they met. Then I had them connect the dots. Both of their meandering trails led to one spot—a little town in California. Then I took the map and I said to Jon, “Do you know how I know God loves you?” He looked at me strangely and then said no, he didn’t. I traced his journey with a pencil as I said, “I know He loves you because over the years, He led you through all these places in your life, watched over you, and kept you safe so that at this time in your life, He could bring you to California and give you Sherry to love.” Well, I saw the penny drop. Jon stared at the map and then at his lovely fiancée and then at the map again. A huge smile broke on his face and he said, “I guess God really does love me.” Coincidence? Some say coincidence is God choosing to remain anonymous; others say coincidence simply means you’re on the right path. Often in writing, coincidence is regarded as a weak literary device—a quick way to advance a plot or move characters from one place to another without the need for a clever story line. But when we look at our own lives—especially those of us who believe God is real and that He has a plan for us—don’t we discover a lifelong thread of “coincidences” that have moved us ever onward toward a specific purpose for our lives? And if God is the author and finisher of our faith, would He use a weak device to write our story? The Road Home is a story about God’s desire to fulfill His intention in people’s lives. In particular, in Jenny, who, though surrounded by a loving family and a satisfying life, is still a mystery to herself and to her adoptive parents, and also in Jonathan, a young man seeking answers to the questions we have all asked in our own lives. This is a story based on what some would call coincidence, but the truth is, there is really no such thing as coincidence. For if God is working all things together for good, then each moment, each event, each step, is somehow governed by His plan. And as for Jenny and Jonathan, the story of their lives brings them both to a little town called Apple Creek, where they pass through a series of “coincidences” that in the end… Well, I’ll let you read the story and find out. Part One Apple Creek Again There’s something about an agricultural town that’s unique and wonderful—a deep link to the land, which brings a sense of being settled and permanent. All the bright days of youth in such a place are held in the mystery of God’s eternal circle of life and death, winter and spring, summer and fall. The cycles of the seasons dictate the deepest feelings in the hearts of those who live there, with days marked not by events, but by smells and colors and sounds and all the other sensory signals. The temperature of a morning’s rising can tell you everything about the day ahead, be it the coolness of a daybreak in spring; the heat of the long, languid days of summer; the crisp bite of a fall day; or the chill of winter that pushes you with icy fingers back under the welcoming warmth of a lovely down quilt. The lilting chirp of a robin outside an open window or the haunting call of the Canada geese heading south can manifest the procession of days more surely than any calendar. The solemn silence of a winter night, with your feet softly crunching on the snow as you make your way toward the light in the window ahead, or the grinding of the machinery and the smell of the thick harvest dust…these things mark the passage of time and bind one surely to the beloved land and the life so graciously granted by the Master of the vineyard. Apple Creek, Ohio, is such a place. It’s especially beautiful in the fall. The leaves of the Buckeye trees turn bright red, and the green, spiked pods that hide the horse chestnuts split open and drop their beautiful brown seeds on the ground. Children pile the leaves into forts and arm themselves with the shiny brown nuts against the trespasses of intruders from down the street. Mornings come armed with the warning bite of winter yet to come, and the air is alive with the promise of families gathered at festive tables and the wonder of frosty nights that delight the heart with cathedrals of starry splendor. Soon the soft snow will blanket all living things in the quiet death of winter, but not yet, for it is harvest time, and the cycle of life is at its peak. The fields surrounding the village are ripe with bounty, and the air is heavy with the fecundity of the yearly progression coming to its fullness. The rest of the world changed greatly after World War II and the Korean War, but Apple Creek remained much the same. Even as the nation wandered into the disaster in Vietnam, the Amish community in Wayne County remained above the growing conflict and social revolution that would follow. It was as though Apple Creek had been captured in a backwater eddy of time and now slowly drifted in a lovely continuity of days while the main current of civilization rushed by into an unknown and frightening future. The Amish in Apple Creek were connected to the land, and the land was forever. The fields stretched to the horizon, and the days were like the fields, reaching back into the permanence of the past and extending forward into a future that they knew held the same tasks, the same demands, the same feasts, and the same succession of birth, life, and death. And yet they were not afraid of death, for they had their God and His promises, they had the land and its harvest each year, and they had the children, who were their inheritance and also a down p*****t on the continuance of their lives. And above everything, they had the simplicity of their way. And it was enough…for some. Chapter One Jenny “Du Schlecht’r!” “Jenny Springer! You should not say such bad words! You should be ashamed.” Jenny’s face burned as she reached behind the quilting frame with her left hand and pushed the errant needle through the quilt to complete her stitch. The finger of her other hand, showing a tiny red drop where she had pricked herself, went into her mouth. She stared angrily at the quilt she was working on. The design was awkward, and the edges of the pattern pieces were puckered where she had attempted to sew them together. “Oh, Mama, I will never, ever be a quilter like you. I just can’t do it.” Her mother’s shocked expression softened somewhat, and she put her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Quilting is a gift from God, and it’s true that you don’t yet seem to have the eye for it. But you’re gifted in so many other ways. Don’t be disheartened. Sometimes you’re a little eigensinnig und ungeduldig, and these qualities do not fit well with quilting. You must learn to still your heart and calm the stream of thoughts rushing through your head.”