Judith Miller, Morning Sky

Morning Sky

Bethany House, Mar 2006, 12.99, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0764229990

In 1880 Nicodemus, Kansas, two generations of Harbans live a quiet lifestyle when unwelcome Lilly Verdue arrives from New Orleans. Ezekiel, the Family patriarch, is unhappy to see his sister-in-law and demands she explain why she came to the quiet plains; Lilly refuses to say much about her past and her reason to hastily depart from the big city for a farming community.

Though she plans to avoid scandal, Lilly thinks her niece Jarena is engaged to the wrong man, a soldier Thomas Grayson, for whose return she loyally waits while caring for her dad and her sister Grace. When Lilly meets Moses Wyman, she believes that though he is engaged to Truth, he is going to marry the wrong Harban, as she feels he and Jarena belong together. She decides to matchmake, which forces her to reveal the truth to her nieces. Needing escape, Truth travels to New York to bring home her ailing friend Macia Boyle from the academy she attends there only to find something more lethally sinister than illness there.

Three years have passed since the events of FIRST DAWN, which enable the audience to see what has happened to the Harban family since then. They remain likable and for the most part admirable while along with a solid support cast bring the late Reconstruction Era Plains to life especially for Christian historical readers. Though the secret and the Truth trip to New York come late, these add suspense by "testing" the Harbans' Christian values including their core belief in God. Judith Miller in her second Freedom's Path tale provides a pleasurable Americana saga.

Harriet Klausner