New Dawn Over Devon (The Secrets of Heathersleigh Hall Book #4)

Michael Phillips

Description

The Great War is finally over, but the Rutherfords' lives will never be the same. In the Devonshire countryside, the family is reunited at last. Heartbroken over past mistakes, Amanda seeks forgiveness in the bosom of her family and in her growing faith. As the Rutherfords look to the future, a discovery at Heathersleigh Hall leads them on an exciting new journey.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Historical romance
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441229571
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

© 2001 by Michael R. Phillips
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www . bakerpublishinggroup . com
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-2957-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover illustration © Erin Dertner / Exclusively represented by Applejack Licensing
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Prologue: The Secrets of Heathersleigh Hall
Clandestine Discovery
Origins
Season of Secrets
A Bishop’s Restitution
Hints and Clues
Maggie’s Revelations
Part I: Summer 1915
1. A Time to Remember
2. The London Rutherfords
3. Heathersleigh Cottage
4. A Little Girl Named Chelsea
5. Hector’s Surprise
6. Bath and Breakfast
7. Rollo Black
8. A Drive to the Coast
9. Layers of Self-Insight
10. Visitor to the Parsonage
11. Invisible Scratches of Character
12. What Might God Do vs. What Won’t He Do
13. The Most Difficult Forgiveness
14. For God So Loved the World
15. Surprise Visitor
16. Name Out of the Past
17. Difficult Thoughts About the Future
18. Crumholtz, Sutclyff, Stonehaugh, & Crumholtz
19. The Garret
20. Difficult Options
21. The Secret Room
22. How Far Should Accountability Go?
Part II: Autumn 1915
23. Something Is at Hand
24. To London
25. A Garden of Dormant Seeds
26. Light Goes Out of the Fountain
27. Timothy’s Counsel
28. Hang On to the Lifeline—God Is Good
29. Thoughtful Return
30. The Greater Victory
31. Be a Good Girl
Part III: Spring 1916
32. A Letter
33. A Fall
34. I Want to Be Good Like Daddy Said
35. Secret Garden-Room of the Heart
36. Another Key
37. Discovery
38. Preparations
39. Visitor From Switzerland
40. Preservation of the Doctrine
41. Good Will Be Called Evil
42. Souls at Risk
43. The Passion to Forgive
44. The Dreaded Word
45. The Mother and the Motherless
46. Betsy and Sister Hope
47. Inquisition
48. I Believe
49. Refuge
50. Do Your Will, Lord
51. Departure
Part IV: Spring–Fall 1916
52. Embedded Message
53. Deciphering the Clues
54. Culmination
55. Letter Home
56. Amanda’s Unwelcome Proposal
57. Argument
58. Two Visitors
59. Hope’s Return
60. Mediterranean Coast
61. Happy Departure
62. Shootout at Sea
63. A Caller
64. Temporary Lodgings
65. Revelation in Hyde Park
66. New Resident in Milverscombe
67. News and No News
68. Impromptu Meeting
69. Christmas 1916
70. Telegram
71. Shock
Part V: 1917
72. New Perspective
73. The Hall and the Cottage
74. More News
75. Summer 1917
76. Stroke
Part VI: 1918–1919
77. Farewell
78. In the Chicken Shed
79. Dreams
80. The Prayer Wood
81. New Bank and the Stable Roof
82. How Can I Forgive Myself?
83. Impromptu Delivery
84. The Banker and the Client
85. The Banker and His Thoughts
86. Excitement in Milverscombe
87. Changes
Part VII: 1920–1923
88. End of a Tumultuous Decade
89. Private Talk
90. Another Private Talk
91. Storm Clouds
92. Decline
93. Farewell
94. Geoffrey and Timothy
95. End of the Fight
96. Stratagems
97. Thirty-Day Call
98. The Will
99. Deliverance
100. More Stratagems
101. Payoff
102. An Offer
103. Loving Admonition
104. Closing of the Circle
105. Joining of the Two
106. A Christmas Trip
107. A Young Crusoe
Epilogue
Ideas in Fiction
The Rutherford Family Lineage
About the Author
Fiction by Michael Phillips
Introduction
Reconciliation—The Highest Truth
This series of books you have been reading has many themes. But mostly it is a story of reconciliation.
I did not intentionally set out to write about reconciliation. But perhaps because I believe that reconciliation is God’s ultimate purpose in the universe, and that such is the ultimate destiny and climax of every human drama, such a theme simply emerged as the Heathersleigh story unfolded.
All stories and all lives must tell the story of reconciliation if they are to accurately reflect the human condition and the highest truth in the universe. That high truth is simply this, that God will make all things right in the end.
However, during our brief sojourn on the earth, we each are called to live out incomplete portions of that great story. Most human lives contain heartbreak. We live in a fallen world. We are sinners who are rebellious and stubborn and independent of heart. Therefore, it is occasionally difficult not to rant against God for the bitterness of our lot. I must confess myself guilty as well. But we only do so because we lose sight of the fact that we occupy but one tiny role in that universal story whose glorious ending is yet to be told.
That ending is reconciliation, restitution, healing. God is good, and I repeat: He will make all things right in the end.
Foundational and intrinsic in reconciliation—between ourselves and God, and ourselves and others—is forgiveness. There can be no healing without forgiveness. Therefore, any story of reconciliation must of necessity also be a story of forgiveness. God is ever sending his forgiveness in pursuit of us in our waywardness, that he might bring us back into the fold of his eternal family—restored, forgiven, and whole. For such a purpose did he send his Son Jesus Christ to die and make atonement for our sins—to send his love and forgiveness into our midst, to reclaim his creation and bring it home.
Accepting this divine forgiveness, however, as important as it is to salvation, is often only the beginning of healing. As we struggle to incorporate forgiveness into our daily lives, learning to forgive ourselves is one of the most difficult aspects of the cross to appropriate in a practical way. We may not face exactly the same struggles that confront Amanda Rutherford. Yet if we are honest with ourselves, I think most of us will admit to great difficulty in bringing forgiveness all the way inside.
But Amanda’s life demonstrates that it is never too late to accept God’s forgiveness, to forgive oneself, and then to pray for a restoration of the years the locusts have eaten.
God is in the business of working personal, private, invisible miracles of healing and restoration. More than any other of his magnificent works in the universe, this is what God does :
He heals hearts.
He fixes human brokenness.
He brings sons and daughters back to their fathers.
He restores.
He makes whole.
He sends his forgiveness after his wayward, hurting, broken, lonely children, like a probe of light, to pierce deep into those private regions of anguish and hopelessness that have been covered over for years. He says, “My child . . . I love you, I understand, I not only forgive the world of its sins through my Son, I forgive you . Now you can also forgive those who have hurt you, because I forgive them . . . and you can forgive yourself. Rise up and be my child—be whole, be clean, be restored, and walk in forgiveness.”
It is never too late to have a happy childhood, though the pain may have stolen its memories from you for a time, or your own wrong attitudes may have caused you to lose sight of them along the way. It is never too late, because the probing miracle-working spade of divine forgiveness can go back and retill the soil of memory and bring new life to long buried flowers within the garden of your soul, whose pleasant fragrance can fill your later years with sweetness no matter what may have come before.
It may surprise you when I say that one of the characters I find most intriguing in this entire series is Bishop Arthur Crompton.
He was originally but a minor character whose role in my author’s brain never extended beyond that of a brief walk-on appearance. He wasn’t supposed to get under my skin. But he did. And I found my heart growing very tender toward him—sin and false motives and hypocrisy and all—as he aged, and as he began looking inward.
Don’t you suppose this is how God looks at us— tenderly , in the midst of our foolishness, our hypocrisy, our selfish motives, and our sin— gently speaking through conscience, through circumstances, through the maturity that the years gradually bring, quietly waiting for us to begin asking the right kinds of questions about what our lives have been about. And when we do, he is there as our own loving Father to accept our humble regrets, to listen to the quiet prayers no one else in all the world hears, and do what he can to make sons and daughters of us, even though our years living for self be many, and our years obeying his voice be few.
As I myself grew tender toward Bishop Crompton, it opened a new window of understanding toward God’s love for me, and for all men.
Arthur Crompton, therefore, though a minor character, typifies this reconciliatory work of the heavenly Father in the lives of his children—a man gone wrong, a man who gave lip service to the service of God for most of his life, but a man whose heart was finally softened in the end by the incessant wooing of his Father’s loving, tender, forgiving, restoring voice.
With regard to the criticism certain to result from Timothy Diggorsfeld’s discussion with his church leaders, I would emphasize again, as I did in the introduction to Wild Grows the Heather in Devon , that Timothy Diggorsfel