Tracie Peterson & Judith Miller The Pattern of Her Heart

The Pattern of Her Heart

Tracie Peterson & Judith Miller

Bethany House, 2005, $12.99

ISBN: 076422896X

In 1857 Lowell, Massachusetts Nolan and Jasmine Houston pray everyday for a miracle as their five years old daughter Alice Ann struggles to recover from Scarlet Fever. When Dr. Hartzfield deems the little girl is healthy enough to celebrate her birthday that passed three months ago, the Houstons rejoice that their beloved child has healed.

Not long afterward, attorney Forbes tells Jasmine and Nolan that her father, her brother and most of her other relatives died from Yellow Fever at the family Mississippi plantation, the Willows. They need to decide what to do with the slaves and the property. Nolan and Jasmine head south to free those slaves who survived the epidemic. In Mississippi their abolitionist philosophy anger their neighbors and the few surviving relatives until someone burns down the Willows leaving Jasmine and Nolan to wonder how to keep their family and themselves safe while doing the right thing for the slaves they want to free.

THE PATTERN OF HER HEART showcases how violent the country was over slavery just prior to the Civil War. The Houstons meet derision and hatred for wanting to free her family slaves. However as noble and obvious as that seems, the pair soon find how complicated that can be. Several of those they want to liberate have no economic means of survival as they have been dependent on their owners and when the Willows is destroyed causing the Houstons to flee for Lowell they ponder how to protect those they left behind from an angry local populace. Book Three of the Lights of Lowell series is a fabulous insightful Antebellum historical.

Harriet Klausner