PROLOGUE

SHE REACHED UP TO PULL down the rear door of the minivan. It slammed shut with a determined, decisive thud. The back of the vehicle was stacked high with moving boxes, but not so high as to obscure her vision for the drive south that would take her and her daughter to a new life, a new beginning.

She carefully placed one last box—the one full of things she most treasured, each carefully wrapped—inside on the front passenger seat. It had to be kept close, safe, and within reach, not in the back with everything else.

She ran her hand over the lid. This one last box held a baby book, yearbooks, family photos—and an old moss green velvet-covered book that was her great-great-great-grandmother’s diary.

Amelia Westland, age thirteen years

Glade Mills

Butler County, Pennsylvania

July 5, 1875

Oh, such a glorious day. On this, my thirteenth birthday, Mother and Father presented me with this perfect blank diary with the most lovely green velvet cover, acknowledging how much writing and observing means to me. I have pledged to them to keep record of my life, so upon reflection many years hence, I shall see the hidden hand of God, His works visible and evident in my days and weeks and years. I shall copy Scriptures that I am hiding in my heart, that I might not sin against our Lord. I now commence doing so.

Father has voiced that this harvest will be the best ever. Corn, wheat, sorghum are all poised to bring abundant yields. Even our vegetable garden behind the house is overflowing. Mother and I will have much to do this fall, putting up for the winter. She has purchased four additional cartons of a new type of Mason jar.

I will trust God and live my life as Reverend Wilcox urges, as a servant, humble, waiting on His command. Father claims that, if I continue to devote myself to learning, and if God wills, my future has no limits—like the sunset over our farm here in Glade Mills, wide and forever. I dream of becoming a schoolteacher. Dare I indulge such a hope?

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD,
thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

—Jeremiah 29:11