Seasons in Paradise

by Cameron, Barbara;

  kind, kinner—child, children

  kumm—come

  lebkuchen—traditional German cookie

  lieb—love

  liebschen—dearest or dear one

  maedels—young single women

  mamm—mom

  mann—husband

  mudder—mother

  nacht—night

  nee—no

  newehocker—wedding attendant

  onkel—uncle

  Ordnung—The rules of the Amish, both written and unwritten. Certain behavior has been expected within the Amish community for many, many years. These rules vary from community to community, but the most common are to have no electricity in the home, to not own or drive an automobile, and to dress a cer-tain way.

  roasht—roast

  rumschpringe—time period when teenagers are allowed to experience the Englisch world while deciding if they should join the church.

  schul—school

  schur—sure

  schweschder—sister

  sohn—son

  verboten—forbidden, not done

  wilkumm—welcome

  wunderbaar—wonderful

  ya—yes

  zwillingbopplin—twins

  Group Discussion Guide

  Spoiler alert! Please don’t read before completing the book as the questions contain spoilers!

  1. In the beginning of the book Mary Elizabeth is still grieving over Sam, the man she loves, leaving the Amish community—and her. Have you ever grieved over losing a relationship with someone you loved? How did you cope?

  2. Mary Elizabeth decides she must move on and start seeing someone else. Have you done this? What advice would you give her?

  3. Do you believe God has a plan for your life? What is it? How do you know when it’s His plan or the one you think you should have?

  4. Amish young people get to experience Englisch life during a period called rumschpringe. While some youth use it as a chance to break out of the strict rules of the Amish community, most do not. Do you think teens of either culture need a period of unrestricted time to mature?

  5. Many Amish believe God has set aside a marriage partner for them. Do you believe this? Do you believe in love at first sight?

  6. Sam finds himself regretting his choice to leave the community. But Mary Elizabeth is seeing someone else. Do you think he deserved a second chance with her?

  7. Home and family mean different things to different people. Sometimes family is made up of our mother, father, and siblings. What is home to you? What is family to you?

  8. Sam and Mary Elizabeth get a second chance at love after Mary Elizabeth forgives him for leaving her and the community. Have you ever gotten a second chance at love?

  9. The family rejoices when Mary Elizabeth’s sister becomes pregnant with her first child. Have you had children? What was your experience?

  10. Sam hopes to buy a farm before he and Mary Elizabeth marry. Many Amish couples live with her parents until they get their own home. If you’re married, did you and your husband have your own home or did you stay with his or your parents first? How did this work out?

  11. How do you feel the struggles Sam and Mary Elizabeth experienced helped them grow as a couple?

  12. Englisch Christmas celebrations are different than those of the Amish. How do you celebrate Christmas?

  Want to learn more about author Barbara Cameron?

  Check out www.AbingdonFiction.com

  for more information on all of Barbara’s books

  and the other fine fiction from Abingdon.

  Be sure to visit Barbara Cameron online!

  www.BarbaraCameron.com

  and on Facebook at

  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Barbara-Cameron -Reader-Page/359763767479635

  And now for a sneak peek at Home to Paradise, book 3 of the Coming Home series.

  1

  Snow fell quietly, cold and white. Inside the big old farmhouse where Rose Anna had lived all her life it was warm. A fire crackled in the hearth, the only sound in the room.

  Rose Anna glanced around the sewing room. Usually she and her two schweschders sat chatting and sewing with their mudder, sometimes singing a hymn as they worked. Today it was just her and her mudder. She sighed. “So here you sit with your old maedel dochder, Mamm.”

  Linda laughed. “I hardly think you’re an old maedel at twenty, Rose Anna.”

  She knotted a thread, clipped it with scissors, and squinted as she rethreaded her needle. Her schweschder Mary Elizabeth had once confided she felt like making an Old Maid’s Puzzle quilt.

  “I feel like one,” she said, pouting a little. “Both of my schweschders are married and so are lots of my friends. I have been a newehocker at so many weddings!” She made a face as she began stitching on her quilt again.

  “Gut-n-mariye!”

  Rose Anna glanced up. “Ach, here comes my newly married schweschder.”

  “Mary Elizabeth, it’s gut to see you. Kumm, sit by the fire and get warm. You look cold.”

  She leaned down and kissed her mudder’s cheek. “Lavina’s on her way up.”

  Linda brightened and turned to look in the direction of the door. When Lavina walked in a moment later her face fell. “Where’s Mark?”

  Lavina laughed and shook her head. “You’re not glad to see me?”

  “Well, schur,” Linda said quickly. “But I thought you were bringing my grosssohn.”

  “He was fussy and stayed up most of the night so now he’s sleeping.” Lavina sank into a chair. “Waneta said she’d mind him so I could get out for a bit. She told me she wouldn’t let him sleep all day so he’d keep us up again.”

  “You look like you need a nap,” Rose Anna told her.

  “It’s tempting, but I need to stay to my goal of finishing this quilt,” she said as she threaded a needle.

  “Could he be teething already?”

  Lavina shuddered. “I hope not. He’s not three months old yet. I’ve heard about teething from my friends.”

  Soon it was like it had been for so long, everyone chattering and sewing, the mood as bright and cheerful as the fire.

  But Rose Anna felt a growing restlessness. She put her quilt aside, went downstairs to make tea for their break, and found herself staring out the kitchen window. The trees were bare and black against the gray sky. Snow had stopped falling, coating everything with a white blanket that lay undisturbed. She found herself pacing the kitchen as she waited for the kettle to boil water.

  Finally she knew she had to get out and burn off her restless energy.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she announced when her mudder and schweschders came downstairs. She pulled on rubber boots and her bonnet, then shrugged on her coat. “I won’t be long.”

  “But kind, it’s cold out there,” her mudder protested.

  “I need to walk. ’Bye.”

  “She’ll be fine, Mamm,” she heard Lavina say behind her before she closed the back door.

  Funny, her older schweschder reassuring their mudder.

  She started off down the road, watching for cars and staying well to the right. Smoke billowed from chimneys as she passed farms. Fields lay sleeping under the snow. The only sound was her boots crunching snow.

  Usually she loved this time of year when life was slower, easier. All the planting, harvesting, canning was over. Farmers spent time in their barns repairing harnesses and equipment and planned their spring planting. Women occupied themselves with sewing and knitting and mending clothes. Kinner grew restive being cooped up and begged to go outside and build snow men.

  The Stoltzfus farm came into view. Lavina had married David, the oldest sohn and lived there now. Mary Elizabeth had married Sam, the middle sohn. And she, the youngest Zook schweschder, had hoped to marry John, the youngest.

  John’s truck, a bright red pick-up, was parked out front. She wondered what he was doing home during a work day. Her feet slowed as she frowned and worried. Was his dat ill again? S
urely Lavina would have said something. Amos had been cured of his cancer for quite some time now.

  John came out of the farm house carrying a box and walked toward the truck, then he saw her. “Need a ride?”

  “Nee, danki,” she said, lifting her chin and walking past him. She might have to be pleasant to him in front of family, but she’d never forgive him for not wanting her any more.

  She heard the engine start and the next thing she knew he was pulling up beside her. He stopped and the window on the passenger side slid down. “You’re sure you don’t want a ride?”

  “I said nee, danki,” she repeated, and her words sounded as cold as the air she was breathing. She’d rather freeze to death than get into his truck.

  His driving the Englisch vehicle was a source of friction between himself and his dat. John was the last of the Stoltzfus bruders who had moved to town after not getting along with their dat and the last to reconcile with him and rejoin the Amish community. The only reason he was living here now was because Sam and Mary Elizabeth had married and John could no longer afford the apartment he’d shared with Sam.

  Mary Elizabeth had confided to her that she and Sam had asked John to move in with them. She supposed that was why John had carried the box out to the truck just now.

  It was nice that they had offered when they’d only been married a few months and moved into their own farm down the road.

  But it meant that she was going to have to see him more often and that rankled.

  Rose Anna glared at the truck. Later she’d chide herself for childishness. She found herself reaching down to a drift of snow at the side of the road, packing some into a hard ball in her hands, and throwing it at the truck as he accelerated away.

  It hit the glass window of the truck cab, dead-on—no surprise since she was great at softball. He slammed on the brakes then got out and stood staring at her, his hands on his hips.

  “Why’d you do that?” he demanded.

  She turned on her heel and began stomping back toward home.

  And that was when she felt something thump her on the back. She turned and saw him forming another snowball in his hands.

  Lowering her eyebrows, she bent, quickly scooped up snow in her hands, formed another ball, and hit him in the center of the chest before he could lob another at her. She took off running toward the Stoltzfus farm and made it to the front door just as he got her with another ball of snow. Doors weren’t locked in the middle of the day. She slipped inside before he could hit her again and found herself staring at Amos sitting in his recliner reading the newspaper.

  “Guder-n-mariye,” she said politely. “Is Waneta home?”

  He closed his mouth that had fallen open at her abrupt entrance and nodded. “In the kitchen.”

  Rose Anna brushed the snow from her coat and wiped her feet before walking there. Waneta stood at the big kitchen table kneading bread.

  “I was just out and thought I’d stop by,” she said brightly. She spun around when she heard footsteps behind her.

  John strolled in just then. “I think you forgot something,” he said, pushing a handful of loose snow in her face.

  “John! Whatever are you doing?” his mudder cried, looking appalled.

  “She started it,” he told her as he strolled out, chuckling.

  Rose Anna wiped the snow from her face and grinned at Waneta as the older woman hurried over with a dish towel to dry her off. “He’s right. I did. I don’t know what got into me.”

  She did know, but she wasn’t going to tell the woman she’d hoped would be her mother-in-law one day. It just hurt too much to share with her how badly her sohn had hurt her when he turned his back on their relationship and left the Amish community.

  2

  If there was anything Rose Anna loved more than quilting it was teaching the twice-weekly quilting class at the women’s shelter in town.

  She’d started volunteering there with her schweschders and now whether or not they were able to come she continued because she enjoyed it so much.

  The shelter was a big, rambling house just outside the town proper. There was no sign in front. People passing by wouldn’t know it was anything but a family home. That was because the women and kinner inside wouldn’t be safe if the husbands and boyfriends the women fled from knew where they were.

  She knocked and Pearl, the woman who ran the shelter, answered the door herself and greeted her with a big smile.

  The shelter should have been a sad place. Actually it had been at times when she first came with Lavina. She’d never seen women with bruised faces or kinner with eyes full of fear who hid behind their mudder’s skirts. It wasn’t that abuse didn’t happen in the Amish community, but it wasn’t something that she had come into direct contact with like here.

  Gradually she’d seen the women’s shelter as a place of hope. Because the place itself had changed.

  The quilting classes Kate Kraft, a police officer and quilting enthusiast, had organized had made a difference.

  One by one, women climbed the stairs to the second floor of the shelter to a room Pearl had converted into a sewing room with long tables and donated sewing machines. Kate had volunteered to teach quilting classes and, being Kate, she’d convinced others to join her.

  Lavina hadn’t believed she could contribute anything, but Kate showed her that she could. And then Lavina had gotten Mary Elizabeth to come.

  So of course Rose Anna had to see why her two older schweschders took time off from their work and daily chores to teach quilting at a women’s shelter.

  And she’d been hooked.

  Kate had made a difference and then Leah, an Amish woman who owned Stitches in Time shop in Paradise, had seen a way to help the women even more. The two of them had come up with the idea for Leah to open a second shop called Sewn in Hope to sell the crafts they made.

  Now the room was filled with women who happily sewed a way out of despair and financed a way to build a future for themselves and their kinner.

  Today many of the women were sewing Thanksgiving and Christmas crafts. They were the most popular items offered at Sewn in Hope at any time of the year.

  Rose Anna stopped by the table near the window where a new resident sat staring at the quilt block that had been handed out at the beginning of the class. The woman looked small, her chin- length brown hair falling forward over her thin face. She wore a faded T-shirt with an Army slogan and camouflage pants.

  “Hello, I’m Rose Anna.”

  The woman jerked and stared up at her with frightened green eyes. “I—hi. I’m Brooke.”

  “Would you like some help with your block?”

  “No, I think I can handle it.”

  She bent over it again, and Rose Anna couldn’t help wondering if she was intent on working on it or trying to hide the yellowing bruise around one eye.

  And Brooke kept glancing nervously at the windows at her side as her fingers plucked at the fabric block.

  “Just let me know if you need anything,” Rose Anna said quietly. “And welcome to the class. I hope you enjoy it.”

  Brooke nodded jerkily and kept her eyes focused on the block.

  Rose Anna walked a few steps away and suddenly something bright and round whirled at her like a child’s Frisbee and chucked her on the chin. She grabbed at it and frowned at the fabric circle. “Why, it’s a yo-yo.”

  “Sorry, Rose Anna.”

  She grinned at Jason, a little boy who’d come to the shelter last month with his mudder and two schweschders. “It’s okay. It didn’t hurt me.”

  “That’s not a yo-yo. Yo-yos are toys.”

  “My grandmother made these,” Edna told him. “I thought about making a quilt with them but then I came up with something different.” She waved a hand at her table and Rose Anna saw that she’d made various sizes of them, stacked them from largest at the bottom to the smallest at the top. Then she’d sewed a fabric ribbon at the top to hang them. They were little trees of fabric.

&
nbsp; “They’re darling,” Kate said as she stopped at the table and held one up. She smiled at Edna “I think they’ll sell well at the shop.”

  “They’re easy to make and don’t take much fabric.”

  “Speaking of fabric.” Kate announced as she walked in. She held up a shopping bag in each hand.

  “I thought you had court this morning.”

  “I did. We finished early and Leah’s shop was on the way here.”

  “Hah!” said Edna. “You know you find every excuse you can to stop by there.”

  “Guilty!” Kate laughed. “So I guess this means you don’t want to see it?”

  Edna jumped up. “You guessed wrong.” She turned to the other women in the room. “Kate’s got new fabric!”

  Sewers swarmed over, eager to check out the new fabric. Kate stepped closer to Rose Anna.

  “I see we have someone new,” she said quietly, jerking her head in the direction of a woman who sat at a table near the windows.

  “Her name’s Brooke. She didn’t want to talk much,” Rose Anna told her. “So I told her to let me know if she needed any help and just let her be. Sometimes it takes a while for a person to feel comfortable.”

  Kate nodded. “I’ll put my things down and say hello.”

  A woman walked up to ask her a question, and after she left, Kate turned to Rose Anna.

  “Where’d Brooke go? I didn’t see her leave the room.”

  Rose Anna glanced around. “I don’t know.”

  “Could I have this piece, Kate?” Edna asked, her eyes bright with excitement. “It’d go great in a lap quilt I want to make.”

  “Sure. Take whatever you want.” She smiled at the women milling around the table admiring the fabric. “Malcolm said if I brought any more fabric home he’d have to build an addition onto the house.”

  Rose Anna laughed. My daed’s always saying things like that. But I noticed that he always smiles when he says it, and he keeps building more shelves in our sewing room.”

  There was a tug on her skirt. She glanced down and saw Lannie, a little girl who was two, clutching at her skirt.

  Lannie popped her thumb out of her mouth. “Lady,” she said, pointing at the table by the window. “Lady,” she repeated and pulled at Rose Anna’s skirt to indicate she should follow her.