Amish Historical Romance

Midwife Kim Osterholzer ushers listeners behind the doors of Amish homes as she recounts her adventures answering God's call to the craft of midwifery. Kim chronicles her nine-year apprenticeship grappling with the nuances and idiosyncrasies of homebirth. She recounts the beauty and painstaking effort of those early years spent catching babies by the light of crackling woodstoves, oil lamps, and lanterns. Every birth enthralled her, whether it involved halting hemorrhages, sharing breath with tiny lungs, or bouncing through wild rides in ambulances.

As May settles into family life, she has so much to be grateful for. Yes, there are plenty of challenges as she continues to heal from the demons of her past, but her loving husband and sweet children are the greatest earthly gift she could ask for. And having Oba in their home is almost more precious than she could have imagined . . . at least, if it weren't for his ongoing anger and hardness of heart. May's children are steadily growing older, and eventually they begin to face relationship struggles of their own. Can May help them navigate the turbulent waters of young love?

For generations, Ellie Hostetler's family has tended their Lancaster County orchard, a tradition her twin brother, Evan, will someday continue. Yet when Evan's draft number is called up in the lottery for the Vietnam War, the family is shocked to learn he has not sought conscientious objector status, despite their Old Order Amish belief in nonresistance. The faraway war that has caused so much turmoil and grief among their Englisher neighbors threatens to touch much too close to home. Can she and her family find the courage to face a future unlike any they could have imagined?

In "No Place Like Home", widow Eva Dienner returns home to meet the man her parents always intended for her. After Hurricane Harvey, Sarah Hook returns to the home she fled and back into the arms of Abram King in "When Love Returns". In "The Courage to Stay", Irene Keim seeks a fresh start in the home of her new friends, but when their son comes around, he's determined to push her out. Atlee Shetler is visiting Birch Breek to escape the memories of his late wife and finds the project of renovating a bakery and its owner much more than he's bargained for in "What Love Built".

Calvin has been keeping a secret from his wife, but it’s not another woman. It’s a little boy. One afternoon when visiting Sarah Anne’s bookmobile, he meets Miles, a 10-year-old living with a foster family down the road. But after spending more time with the boy, Calvin learns that his foster family has no plans to adopt him. Calvin feels a connection with Miles and yearns to give the boy a home, but he’s afraid to tell Miriam, knowing she’s devastated they can’t have children of their own.

While most women her age are searching for husbands, Astrid Kauffman has chosen a different path—writing romance novels and donating her profits to her beloved Amish community. But when Astrid struggles with writer's block, she agrees to play matchmaker for Imogene Yoder, a widowed mother of rambunctious twin boys. Perhaps the diversion will spark her creativity. Fortunately, Astrid has just the match for Imogene: a widower she believes is the finest, most handsome man in town. In fact, Astrid realizes he's perfect . . . for herself!

Newly widowed Amish woman Anita Graber has returned to live with her brother and his family in Lancaster County. As an expectant widow, she is quite surprised when everyone from the bishop's wife to her brother decides that her baby needs a father. Anita endures many embarrassing moments as she's forced into one awkward situation after another. Even though another man is the last thing on her mind, she finds a friend in her sister-in-law's brother, Simon.

Clinton has died and May is left to fend for herself in a city where she knows almost no one and has no way of earning a living. Not knowing where Oba had wound up and realizing she can't return to her uncle's home after all he'd put her through, she decides to journey to the Amish community where she spent her first years, before her parents' died. Perhaps the relatives who once turned her away had had a change of heart and would be willing to take her in or help her get settled on her own.

Romance is in the air, old-fashioned courtship is alive and well, and love is an eternal promise in these three novellas from Beth Wiseman, Kelly Long, and Kathleen Fuller.

For years, Edna Miller has found herself drawn to Emery Hoschtettler with an attraction she can explain no better than she can put a stop to it. Other suitors come and go, but none make her feel the way she feels around Emery - that incredible floating feeling, as if she was walking on air, mixed with a painful desperation to be ever nearer to him. Despite the fact that Emery seldom seems to pay her much attention, she decides it would be unfair to marry anyone else when her heart longs only for him. He hasn’t seriously dated anyone else either.

Ruby Weaver's curly red hair isn't the only thing that sets her apart from her Amish community in 1863. Twenty-eight and single, Ruby doesn't believe a woman needs to be married in order to be happy. Her ailing friend Lovinia Fischer, however, has other ideas and wants Ruby to promise to marry her husband after she dies. Never imagining she'd have to fulfill that vow, Ruby agrees. And she's not the only one. Lovinia has extracted a similar promise from her husband, Gideon.

Naomi King, soft spoken, loyal, and easily overlooked, has a gift. She sees what others can't see. Intuition, she calls it. Others in Stoney Ridge don't know what to make of it and dismiss her hunches and inklings altogether. When a young woman arrives at the Inn at Eagle Hill with a shocking secret about Tobe Schrock, Naomi fears the worst. She can't ignore the feeling that something sinister is at work - something more than a threat to the tenuous love begun between her and Tobe.

Michelle Taylor is not who her new family in Lancaster County believes her to be. The Lapps were looking for their long-lost granddaughter when they met Michelle, and she assumed the identity of Sara Murray. Once homeless and hopeless, Michelle has come to love her new Amish friends and even considers the idea of romance among them. Finding an old blue jar in the barn that is filled with slips of paper containing thoughts, quotes, and prayers by an unknown author becomes a boost to Michelle’s budding faith.

When Elizabeth Kaufman received the news of her husband's death at the Battle of Vicksburg in 1863, she felt only relief. She determined that she would never be at the mercy of any man again, even if it meant she would never have a family of her own. Then Aaron Zook comes home with her brother when the war ends two years later.

Katie Stuckey and Jonas Weaver are both romantics. Seventeen-year-old Katie is starry-eyed, in love with the idea of being in love, and does not want to wait to marry Jonas until she is 18, despite her parents' insistence. So much can happen in a year. Twenty-year-old Jonas is taken in by the romance of soldiering, especially in defense of anti-slavery, even though he knows war is at odds with the teachings of the church. When his married brother's name comes up in the draft list, he volunteers to take his brother's place.

To most townsfolk, he's known simply as The Beast. Annabelle Beiler has little interest in gossip, but she's heard about Adam Herschberger's scars and his gruff, solitary ways. Though he sounds like a character from one of Belle's treasured books, the man is real and, it turns out, just as unreasonable as the rumors claim. When a buggy accident wipes out the last of her daed's money, forcing him to sell their farm, Adam buys it. Then he offers Belle a deal - marry him, and her family can keep their home.

Noah made the decision to stay behind when Miranda and Simon went away on their rumspringa. That decision cost him his best friend and his betrothed at the same time, all because he couldn't bring himself to leave his sister after she passed up marriage to take care of him when he was younger. A year later, he runs into them, but they have become Englischers. Will Noah be able to accept the changes in Miranda and win her back, or will her circumstances prevent her from returning to the Amish ways without getting Noah shunned?

Hannah Yoder loves her quiet life on the banks of the Conestoga Creek. In 1842, this corner of Lancaster County is settled and peaceful - yet problems lurk beneath the placid façade. Hannah's father worries about the spread of liberal ideas from their Mennonite and Brethren neighbors. And Hannah blames herself for a tragedy that struck their home nine years ago. She strives to be the one person who can bind the threads of her family together in spite of her mother's ongoing depression and her sister's rejection of their family. But her world is threatening to unravel.

Anthony and Marty Hirschler are part of an Old Order Mennonite community in Pine Hill, Indiana. The couple has grown apart since a doctor confirmed they would never have children. Marty longs to escape the tight-knit area where large families are valued, and the opportunity to do so arises when her childhood friend, Brooke Spalding, resurfaces with the wild idea of rebuilding a ghost town into a resort community. Brooke hires Anthony to help with the construction, drawing the Hirschlers away from Indiana and into her plan, and then finds herself diagnosed with cancer.

Dale Cramer’s enthralling Paradise Valley introduced Caleb Bender, an Amish man who, in the 1920s, led his family from Ohio to Mexico to form a new settlement. Its compelling sequel, The Captive Heart, finds Caleb and his family struggling to adapt to their new lives in a country torn apart by revolution. But their true test is yet to come. When a bandit kidnaps his daughter and wounds his son, Caleb knows he must act before his children are put in further danger. Yet what can an Amish man do when violence is strictly forbidden?