Miss Katie's Rosewood (Carolina Cousins Book #4)

Michael Phillips

Description

The Stirring Conclusion to the Carolina Cousins Series!A lone rider galloped through the night.He could not slow down or it would be too late. Many lives, and his own future, depended on his getting there in time....Winds of change are blowing over the Carolina cotton fields . . . changes that will rock the lives of all those who live at the Rosewood Plantation. Katie and Mayme are young women now. Jeremiah has left to seek work in the city. Can change be far behind for the rest of the Rosewood family? Trouble lives not only in the South . . . danger lurks everywhere. When Katie and Mayme travel north by train to Philadelphia, only one of them is still on board when the train reaches its destination. . . .Meanwhile, the KKK plans to burn Rosewood to the ground, forcing the family to face a terrible decision. Save Rosewood--or themselves? Will the Rosewood family survive this threat to their beloved home? Or will they be forced to say a final goodbye to . . .Miss Katie's Rosewood

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441211330
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Cover
© 2007 Michael 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.backerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2012
Ebook corrections 04.15.2016 (VBN), 10.23.2017
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—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—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 978-1-4412-1133-0
Cover design by The DesignWorks Group Cover photography by Steve Gardner, PixelWorks Studio
To courageous, bold-thinking Christians . . .
—and our many loyal readers through the years who have written to express their appreciation for the ways in which my books, and those of George MacDonald, have helped them think and pray more expansively about the nature and character of God and His work.
In a world where perceived “doctrinal correctness” exerts an almost pervasively overpowering influence in the church, not all Christians appreciate bold and honest challenges in faith. Most are content to dwell in the comfort zones of safe theological harbors where every question has a predetermined response, passed down through the years by the accepted “traditions of the elders.” For those finding themselves in such an environment who choose to launch out into deeper scriptural waters, the spiritual journey can be a lonely one. Though there are a few exceptions, to whom the body of Christ owes a great debt, the courage to examine status-quo doctrines more carefully than is customary is neither honored nor encouraged by many pastors, priests, leaders, teachers, publishers, or evangelists. Those who attempt to explore such deeper waters usually find themselves swimming upstream against a tidal deluge of proof-text theology (with little fresh thought included) massed against them. Yet they are driven on in their quest. They hunger to probe the far-reaching themes of Scripture and thus to know the Father-heart of God more intimately.
It has been to encourage you —and you know who you are—in that quest that I write. Your responses have confirmed that it is an adventure—a difficult one—that we have shared, and continue to share, together. And we must all take heart to continue! Because in no other way than by probing the Scriptures prayerfully and expansively can we learn to know God the Father as Jesus did.
To know God aright, not by doctrine but by the high Logos truth of His nature as revealed by His Word, and then to obey Him in Not my will Christlikeness, is the one true goal of spirituality. This book and the journey herein depicted is dedicated to you who have made that right knowing, and the prayerful desire for Christlike obedience that of necessity proceeds out of it, the deep cry of your heart and the focus of your life’s pilgrimage. From the bottom of my heart I thank you for your encouragement and support in my quest. And I encourage and honor you in your own!
C ONTENTS

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
1. Midnight Warning
2. Tragedy
3. Pursuit
4. Watch
5. By the Stream Bank
6. Apprehension
7. Reflections
8. In the Country
9. The Cell
10. Witness
11. The Beginning
12. Scaffold
13. Train
14. Separation
15. Forever Changed
16. On the Train
17. Philadelphia
18. No Trace
19. Rosewood
20. Katie’s Bold Decision
21. Peculiar Rescue
22. Getting Worried
23. News and Secrets
24. Visitor to Bingham Court
25. A Quiet Talk at Dusk
26. Fateful Visit
27. I Take Matters Into My Own Hands
28. The Wind in the Horse’s Head
29. New Friends
30. Perfume and Problems
31. On the Trail of the Kidnappers
32. Too Late
33. Stranger in a White Neighborhood
34. Near Wolf’s Cove
35. Rescue
36. Waiting
37. Sunrise Thoughts
38. Rosewood’s Three Men
39. Reunion
40. The Old Farm
41. Baltimore
42. Good-bye to the North
43. Harvest Time
44. More Surprises
45. A Talk About the Future
46. Cotton and Omens
47. Seeds
48. Sam Jenkins
49. Herb Watson
50. Mr. Watson’s Offer
51. Rosewood’s Owners Talk It Over
52. Final Determination
53. The Warning
54. The Decision
55. Good-bye
56. Standoff
57. Campfire Reflections
58. North
59. New Rosewood
60. New Beginnings
61. The Rest of Our Lives
Epilogue: Remembering
More From Michael Phillips
A Personal Closing Message From Michael Phillips
About the Author
Other Books by Author
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Back Cover
P ROLOGUE


We’d been through a lot together, Katie and me. First we were strangers. Then we began thinking of ourselves as sisters trying to survive together. Then we found out that we were actually cousins .
But mostly we were friends. And that made all the difference in the world.
And now these two friends, Kathleen Clairborne and me, Mary Ann Daniels—Katie and Mayme as we called each other—were just about grown-up young women. It was hard to imagine, but I was twenty and when you get to be that age you look at things a little differently than you do when you’re fourteen or fifteen. That’s how old Katie and I were in the spring of 1865 when we met just after the war ended. Now it was 1870. The South had changed and things were dangerous.
As I said, I was twenty and Katie was nineteen. We loved our North Carolina home, the plantation called Rosewood in Shenandoah County, but my father and our uncles (Templeton Daniels was my father, Ward Daniels was my uncle, and they were both Katie’s uncles) had been encouraging us to think about our future. Their sister, our aunt Nelda, had visited Rosewood a while earlier and had invited us north for a visit. She had written a few times since too, telling us about a girls’ school for young women in Philadelphia where we could get more of an education than either of us had ever dreamed possible.
It wasn’t that my papa or Uncle Ward were anxious to see us leave Rosewood. If they could have had their way, they would keep us there permanently. But they wanted what was best for us, even if it meant leaving for a while to attend school in the North. They recognized that things were changing for women as much as for Negroes. They wanted to give us every opportunity to do as much with our lives as possible.
The idea of being separated wasn’t one any of us liked. But Katie and I gradually realized that maybe my papa and Uncle Ward and Aunt Nelda were right, and that we needed to see what schooling might offer two girls like us who weren’t really girls anymore. If we didn’t take advantage of schooling pretty soon, it could be too late. That’s not the kind of thing you can do after you start a family.
My beau, Jeremiah Patterson, was in the North, and not so very far from our Aunt Nelda’s in Philadelphia. That gave me another reason for looking forward to the trip. I hadn’t seen him in over six months, since just after his daddy Henry’s marriage to Josepha, our cook and friend. And Robert Paxton, Katie’s young man friend, had just moved to Hanover, Pennsylvania, also not so very far away from Philadelphia.
So we decided to take the train north to visit Aunt Nelda for three or four weeks, to visit the school in Philadelphia and see if we liked it there. And also hopefully to arrange a visit with Jeremiah and Rob.
We planned to go north in May.
Even without Jeremiah’s help, the six of us at Rosewood (my papa and Uncle Ward, Henry and Josepha, along with Katie and me) had got the fields ready and the year’s cotton crop planted. We’d even managed to get ten more acres planted than the previous year. So it would be a good time for us to be away. The weather would be good, the cotton would keep growing, and we’d be back in plenty of time for the harvest. And we needed a good harvest too, because a few debts had piled up over the past year or two.
At least that’s how we had it planned.
But one thing about plans . . . you never know when something’s going to come along and upset them.
M IDNIGHT W ARNING
1

A LONE RIDER GALLOPED THROUGH THE NIGHT .
Luckily there was enough of a moon for his horse to see its way along the deserted dirt road. He could not slow down or it would be too late. Many lives, and his own future, could depend on his getting there in time.
He had his own sleeplessness to thank that he had gotten wind of the plot at all. Otherwise he might have slept through the whole thing.
Something had awakened him shortly after midnight—fate, an inner premonition, maybe the voice of God telling him to wake up and sound the warning. Whatever it was, suddenly he was awake in his bed, with blackness and silence around him.
He rolled over, groped for his nightstand, struck a match, lit a candle, then looked at his watch where it lay at his bedside.
Twelve twenty-three.
He sighed and lay back down. This was no time for sane men to be awake. Yet some inner sense told him that he ought to get up and have a look around. He crawled out of bed, pulled on his trousers and boots, picked up the candle lamp, and went downstairs.
What he was afraid of, he wasn’t sure. There had been some petty thievery in town. Deke Steeves and a few of his cronies were always up to no good. But what could they steal from his place?
Unless . . .
His mind clouded with dark forebodings.
The warnings that had been given him were threatening enough. Were they perhaps not going to wait to see if he complied? He had been sure they would do nothing unless he crossed them. Even then, he had doubted they would try anything serious. Their own livelihoods were too dependent on him.
But had he misjudged their intentions?
His heart beat rapidly