DRAGON FIRES EVERYWHERE (Witchlore Book #4) by Hazel Beck is the last book in this quartet of paranormal/magical romances and the final battle for control between the Riverwood Coven and the Joywood Coven of witches. The romance focuses on Coven Historian, Georgiana “Georgie” Pendell and Azrael the dragon shifter from her dreams. I have enjoyed all the books and I recommend that the series is best read in order of publication.
Historian of the Riverwood Coven, Georgie Pendell, has always played her part, but she is beginning to feel like an outsider in her own life and group of friends. When she discovers her boyfriend cheating on her return from a trip, Georgie finds herself dismissing love as a fairytale. Depressed and mad, she sits by the dragon carved newel post in her home, and she reads aloud from an enchanted storybook which frees the dragon shifter, Azrael.
Georgie finds herself drawn to the dragon in ways she didn’t think were even possible. With his fiery golden gaze and arrogance, he claims Georgie as his own. While Georgie believes in books and the knowledge they possess, she finds it difficult to believe in herself, Azrael tries to teach her how special she is, but he is keeping a secret that could change both their destinies. Can Georgie discover what knowledge the Joywood Coven has hidden from the Riverwood Coven and all the town’s magical creatures to defeat their black magic once and for all?
I really enjoyed this entire series, but this last book especially. The world building is very well done in all. The paranormal characters; witches, animal familiars, ghosts, and non-magical town population all come together to make an entertaining read. The dialogue and emotions can go from serious, as they fight for their lives, to humorous close friend chatter. Georgie and Azrael are great protagonists as they continually grow throughout the story. The final battle between good and evil is great and brings all the characters together to a satisfying conclusion.
I highly recommend this engaging paranormal/magical romantic suspense book and series!
***
About the Authors
Hazel Beck is the magical partnership of a river witch and an earth witch. Together they have collected two husbands, three familiars, two children, five degrees, and written 200+ books. As one, their books will delight with breathtaking magic, emotional romance, and stories of witches you won’t soon forget. Their four-book Witchlore series kicks off with SMALL TOWN, BIG MAGIC.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE LOST PHOTOGRAPH by Archana Maniar on this Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my mini book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links, and a PICT giveaway. Enjoy and good luck!
***
Book Description
A forgotten photograph. A trailblazing ancestor. And a modern woman about to discover that her family’s past holds the key to her future.
When overworked surgeon Jaanvi Chowdhury finds a mysterious photograph and a small stack of letters hidden in her Boston attic, she uncovers the remarkable story of her great-aunt Kalyani Joshi–one of the first Indian women to study medicine in 1920s London.
As Jaanvi pieces together her ancestor’s life, she discovers Kalyani’s experience of colonial oppression, her role in India’s fight for independence, and her unlikely connection with a Scottish missionary’s son, Alexander. Drawn together by their passion for literature, Kalyani and Alexander will risk everything for a free India, putting their loyalty, love, and choices to the test.
Navigating between past and present, Jaanvi confronts her own struggles. Passed over for promotion, she has lost sight of why she became a doctor. But as she learns how fiercely Kalyani fought for each opportunity–and the price she paid–Jaanvi begins to question her own carefully constructed life. Can her great-aunt’s unprecedented story help her reclaim not just her purpose in medicine but her sense of who she truly is?
Genre: Historical Fiction with Contemporary Themes Published by: Lake Union Publishing Publication Date: September 15, 2026 Number of Pages: 399 ISBN: 9781662528729 (ISBN10: 1662528728)
***
My Mini Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
THE LOST PHOTOGRAPH by Archana Maniar is an engaging dual timeline story set both in the present following a talented female Indian heritage surgeon, Jaanvi, and in the late 1920s in India following her ancestor, Kalyani, and Scottish immigrant, Alexander. This is a story that conveys a compelling narrative about two women in society, past and present, and their struggles in both. While this is a dual timeline book, the story is told in three POVs.
Both the descriptive writing and historical research bring both timelines to life. They are also intertwined perfectly. My slight problem while reading this, and while I realize it was probably necessary, was the use of so many Indian words throughout which took me out of the flow of the story at times. That said though, this is a story that is rich in Indian culture and history that is worth working through the vocabulary. The romantic subplot between Kalyani and Alexander added to the stakes and tension in the historical timeline.
I recommend this story of two women’s struggles and triumphs in the times and societies they inhabit.
***
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Jaanvi
Massachusetts, August 2019
If there was one thing that Jaanvi Chowdhury couldn’t endure these days, it was stillness. She had taken the week off to rest. On Saturday, she’d managed to sleep in until 6.30 a.m. On Sunday, she’d briefly reclined in a hammock with a novel. She had even gone for a massage and manicure on Monday. But by Tuesday, she was climbing the walls of her old Massachusetts colonial, desperate for something to do. Jaanvi took in a whiff of fumes from her so-called VOC free paint and sighed. Clearly, the concept of a staycation was lost on her.
Instead of relaxing, she had painted the whole house this week—Pewter Gray, Retro Mint, Secret Cove, and even the more risqué Berry Frappe. But as she glanced around the living room on Friday night, she realized that neither the new colors that graced her walls nor the smell of fresh paint that permeated her house evoked the sense of renewal that she had hoped for.
She’d planned the time off back in May, after a rough patch at work. As a general surgeon at a local community hospital, she had seen her patient load explode after a nearby hospital was shuttered. In her mid-career, she’d borne the brunt of the work—experienced enough to handle a variety of complex cases that her younger colleagues might shy away from, energetic enough to keep up with the demands of the operating room that older colleagues had grown weary of. But the workload left little spare time. Each day was an exercise in triage and damage control. Most of the time, she loved the adrenaline rush of handling surgical emergencies but increasingly, she felt as though something in her life was off. What it was she could not name. At one point, after a particularly grueling week dealing with gangrenous gall bladders and perforated colons, her
husband, Gautam, had suggested she take a week off. Take some time for yourself, he’d said. At that point, the staycation had seemed like a good idea.
Now, as she surveyed the room strewn as it was with canvas furniture covers, empty paint cans, varying sizes of excess baseboard, wads of used painter’s tape, and misshapen, half-dried paint trays, she wondered if it actually was. If anything, she’d be working later into the night tidying up after her painting misadventure than if she had just gone to work. She shook her head. What on Earth was she thinking?
She gathered several unwieldy pieces of extra baseboard and unsteadily made her way up the stairs to stow them in the attic. The floorboards creaked with familiarity under her feet, flooding her with memories of countless trips up into the cavernous storage space. Jaanvi had grown up in the very same house, here in Worcester, Massachusetts. She and Gautam had moved into the colonial with their twin sons, Akash and Varun, when her parents had relocated to a nearby retirement community. She loved the house, from its exacting symmetries and quaint dormer windows to its Shaker cabinets and ornate crown molding, to the ample backyard perfect for their golden retrievers, Mirchu and Meetu.
Still, as she made her way up the time-worn steps to the attic, she took pause. Long ago, during his Ouija board days, her brother Rakesh had been curious about the dusty place, convinced he’d make a fortune discovering some old treasure from the Revolutionary War days, perhaps with the help of a long-dead resident. Jaanvi, on the other hand, was certain he’d awakened phantasms bent on vengeance that continued to lurk among the rafters.
She balanced the baseboard in one hand and opened the diminutive attic door. Greeted to a burst of stale air, she ducked to enter. She switched on the hanging lightbulb, taking a quick look around the disheveled, crowded space, rife with creatures with more than four legs and God
only knew what else. Boxes were strewn in every direction, some stacked together in a seeming attempt at organization, others solitary and uncategorized. Making sure that the baseboard cleared the door, Jaanvi veered slightly to the right and navigated her way to the far side of the attic where she laid the material against the wall. She’d hardly been there for a few minutes, and the place was giving her the creeps. Eager to make an exit, she didn’t notice the stack of precariously perched boxes behind her, colliding squarely into them and losing her balance. As she tried to right herself, three boxes promptly slid off one another and crashed on to the floor. All manner of photographs, knick-knacks, baubles and trinkets came spilling out.
“Damned ataxia!” she muttered, cursing everything from her utter lack of coordination to her half-baked idea to paint the house to the unkempt nature of her attic, and then chiding herself for breaking her ten-day expletive-free streak.
She shook her head, surveying the mess. This would take forever to clean up. She had planned to have a full, home-cooked dinner ready for Gautam and the boys when they got home from Varun’s basketball game; instead, as usual, she’d barely have a pot of water boiling before they arrived. Some mother she was.
She crouched down and began to shove the wayward whatnots back into the boxes, still scolding herself. Initially, she gathered the photos from the floor without paying much mind to their provenance. Turning one of the images over so it was right side up, she realized she was holding a black-and-white photograph. It had to be old—very old—judging by its creased, yellowed edges. In the snapshot were three women, two white and one Indian. Their arms were locked around one another and they wore generous smiles, as if the image had been captured right after one of them had cracked a private joke. Jaanvi couldn’t help but smile as well. The friendship between them seemed to jump off the vintage photo paper.
She dropped to the floor into a seated position, dust bunnies scurrying from under her, painting project and dinner entirely forgotten, as she studied the Indian woman more closely. Jaanvi felt like she was looking at a replica of herself; the only distinguishing difference was that the woman in the photograph wore a diminutive golden ring in her nose and a bindi on her forehead. In the background Jaanvi noticed a bricks-and-mortar building bearing a sign that read “London School of Medicine for Women”. She looked at the back of the image and noted a scrawled inscription: “Kalyani, Emma and Elizabeth. London 1928”.
Jaanvi turned the photo over and stared again at her doppelgänger.
Kalyani? Could this be the same Kalyani she’d heard mentioned a few times over family get-togethers—the long-lost aunt that nobody in the family seemed to know much about? What was she doing posing in front of the London School of Medicine for Women?
Jaanvi shook her head. Honestly, she never paid much mind to the old Joshi family lore. She wasn’t sure how much of the stories to believe, and unlike the other laboriously detailed Joshi yarns, this one was rarely discussed and exceptionally vague. Jaanvi scratched her head. Was it possible that Kalyani had attended medical school in London back in 1928? Jaanvi would have assumed that women, especially Indian women, wouldn’t have been allowed to in those days, but here was photographic evidence of an entire school dedicated to women in pursuit of just that line of study.
She scrutinized the image again. There was something about the aesthetic, something about the vitality memorialized in the exposure that mesmerized her. She thought about the skill of the photographer who’d taken the snap. They’d not only considered the lighting, symmetry, and spacing but read the very mood of the moment. Then again, perhaps it was just a matter of luck. In the vacuous hush of the attic, a wave of nostalgia swept over Jaanvi. One of her
photography professors in college used to say just that. The most memorable photographs are usually a matter of serendipity.
That was a lifetime ago.
Brushing off her reminiscences, she glanced at the snapshot and then out of the dormer window. The summer sun was descending languidly, as if it were willing to give her the luxury of time for more discoveries. But Jaanvi had lost track of the hour. Mirchu and Meetu still needed to be fed, and then she had to get some semblance of dinner ready for the family.
She considered the remaining items lying spilled out across the floor and began placing them back into their boxes, her discovery encouraging her to handle the rest with more care. Standing up, she took stock of the mess of boxes around her, slid the photo into the oversized pocket of her flannel shirt, and made her way out of the attic. Apparently, there was more to the room than dust bunnies, six-legged creatures, and phantasms bent on revenge. Maybe tomorrow she’d ditch the dirty paint brushes and rollers and come back to explore the eerie alcove instead. Relief washed over Jaanvi. Finally, she had something else to do with her time off.
***
Author Bio
Born near Chicago to immigrants from India, Archana Maniar relocated with her parents to Mumbai at age four. After the culture shock abated, she fell in love with her parents’ homeland until chance brought the family to California. During vacations and family occasions, Mumbai was a frequent destination. She attended college at University of California, Los Angeles where she studied political theory and biology before attending medical school at the University of California, Davis. As a professor of medicine and practicing infectious diseases physician, she was a frontline healthcare worker from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and was deeply involved in health system pandemic preparedness. Always a writer in the margins of her day, storytelling became an obsession during her medical career, a way to process her observations about human nature during health, stress, and sickness. With a stubborn case of wanderlust, when she is not working or writing, she is usually traveling somewhere with her family. The Lost Photograph is her second novel.
Frances and George are looking forward to a Christmas season enlivened by all the diversions London can provide. But family comes first, and George’s sister Fiona and her husband persuade everyone to gather at their Norfolk estate for the holiday. The weather will be chilly, but the prospect of snow delights the youngsters. And with blazing fires and invigorating country walks in store, Frances envisions a peaceful, jolly Christmas.
Instead of a picturesque snowfall, however, Norfolk is hit by pounding rainfall and high winds. In the aftermath of the storm, Frances, Fiona, and the children make an unpleasant discovery in a nearby field—the body of their neighbor, dead in suspicious circumstances. Joshua Penhollow was the local doctor, though not a well-respected one. Indeed, most viewed him as a quack, and even his own stepdaughter held a grudge against him.
With the menfolk gone to help clear a blocked road, the investigation falls to Frances and Fiona, who must also curb the young people’s excitement at encountering a real-life murder. Combing through a village full of colorful characters and more than a few suspects, Frances feels any hope of a quiet Christmas slipping away. But more pressing is the need to stop a killer whose heart is as cold as the season . . .
***
Elise’s Thoughts
A Christmas Guide to Family and Murder by Dianne Freeman is an entertaining story about a murder investigated by the main character Frances, her sister-in-law, Fiona and their three children.
The story begins with George’s sister Fiona and her husband, Robert, persuading the Hazelton clan to gather at their Norfolk estate for the holiday. The weather will be chilly, but the prospect of snow delights the youngsters.
Instead of a picturesque snowfall, however, Norfolk is hit by pounding rainfall and high winds. In the aftermath of the storm, Frances, Fiona, and the children make an unpleasant discovery in a nearby field: the body of their neighbor, dead in suspicious circumstances. The victim, Joshua Penhollow was the local doctor, though not well-respected or liked.
All the men of the family are called out of town to help with villages damaged by the storm. This leaves the investigation falling to Frances and Fiona, who must also curb the young children’s excitement at encountering a real-life murder.
The children, Rose, nine years old and her cousins, Grace and Gregory, nine and ten were assigned to write a Christmas story based on Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. The children were resolute in writing a murder mystery. In their story, Scrooge is the victim and the two detectives assigned to the case, named Frank and Georgianna, obviously inspired by George and Frances, solve the crime. They title it “A Christmas Murder” and are excited about the presence of the body in the house realizing they can help with the murder investigation. Frances is dismayed by the children’s enthusiasm for crime-solving at first, but realizes they have some good insight, especially since the village is full of an overabundance of suspects.
Intertwining the children’s writing of the story with the actual investigation makes for entertaining interludes. This Christmas story has plenty of family, secrets, and investigation. Readers wanting A Christmas Carol turned on its head involving a murder mystery will like this read.
***
Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Idea for the story?
Diane Freeman: It was kind of a roundabout way. This was the third book in the series. I’d known for a couple of years that I was going to be writing a Christmas story. And in my mind, I had an image of George and Frances, my main characters, out looking for Christmas greenery and stumbling over a body buried in the snow. But when it came down to writing it, I kind of ran into a problem with weather.
EC: What was the problem?
DF: At that point, we were in December of 1900, and it was the warmest December on record for the UK. And it was snowing, nowhere. Sometimes, it’s little facts like that that just trip you up. And hopefully you find them while you’re still in the planning phase, like I did. I just kept reading the weather reports and found on New Year’s Eve that year, there was a gale that hit the east coast of England and did a lot of damage. They ended up going out to the countryside in the county of Norfolk, and they were hit by the gale. And everything kind of followed from there. I just moved the gale up by ten days.
EC: How would you describe Frances?
DF: I think Frances is kind of an amalgam of all the heiresses, because I feel like they really had to be. She’s an American, and her family was new money. They came into money when Frances was about 10 years old. And they moved to New York, where she was raised not really learning how to do any practical things. Her mother raised her to eventually become a countess or a duchess or something of that nature, so she had art, music, and languages, and she knew the events of the day, and could carry on a good conversation. But she didn’t know how to make a cup of tea, or boil an egg or anything of that nature. So, when she became a widow, she was thrust into a whole new situation, especially since her husband has spent all the money. She is gutsy, adventurous, willing to give it a try, with her biggest character trait courage.
EC: George, her second husband, was hardly in it?
DF: The men were called away because streets were blocked by trees that were felled from the storm, gas works were broken, houses were flooded with the Norfolk coast itself kind of notorious for erosion. It’s been kind of weaning away, and houses do occasionally have to be moved back, because the coastline recedes. It made sense, that the men would have to leave, and I wanted a case where Frances would have to be on her own, because even the police were gone. Frances is my sleuth. And though she and George work together, I occasionally want readers to see that she’s grown. And I thought this was a good situation for that, even though the family and the kids helped her.
EC: The children did play a role in solving the mystery?
DF: The children wrote the Scrooge story centered around the murder. Only because if Scrooge had been murdered, really, would anybody miss him? And that was kind of the case with Dr. Penhallow. Nobody really liked him. Nobody. But nobody was crying over him. Nobody was really missing him. His wife, to some degree.
Frances would not have wanted them completely involved in the murder, and that was another reason. I had George and her brother-in-law Robert had to leave, because I didn’t want them taking the place of what things that the kids could be doing. They would be really excited to see what happened in a real investigation. So that was really the kind of reason for having them write that story, to get them involved. My initial first draft, I just kept pushing the kids aside, making them do something else. And I thought, ‘This isn’t working. This is a Christmas guide to family and murder. They must be involved in this.’ So, I scrapped that and started over. And the idea of having them write their own story and wanting to do some research worked well.
EC: How would you describe the children?
DF: I have no children, so they’re kind of how I remember being as a kid. Christmas is certainly exciting, but once they had a project that they are involved in, I think that kind of takes over everything. They’re inquisitive, they’re fun, and in the case of Gregory, kind of a little smart aleck. I just think they’re typical 9- and 10-year-olds from my past. In the book there is a quote, “Children think everything is a negotiation and a democracy.” I am pretty sure this is relevant to any parent.
EC: What was the role of Christmas?
DH: I wanted this to feel like a family book. To me, holidays are all about family, so even though there are some of them called away, and even though there’s a murder dropped in the middle of it, they kind of carry on.
EC: Is this a cozy mystery?
DF: I always think of it as a traditional mystery, but I think it follows some of the cozy rules. Most of anything gruesome is off the page. There’s no sex, no violence, nothing of that nature. And that tends to be a thing with cozies, which kind of puts a whole other definition to the word cozy, that the victim and the killer usually know each other. Sometimes it can be too cozy.
EC: Why the Victorian era?
DF: I read a book called To Mary a British Lord, and then I saw “Downton Abbey,” and I thought of Cora Crowley. I just thought it was fiction. And then when I realized this really happened. There was a quarterly publication called “Titled Americans,” that you could buy at a newsstand, kind of like online dating, but it would say, what titled gentlemen were available, what titles they held, what land they held, and if they had any money. So that the American family could figure out how to fill this Lord’s need, and then make a deal. Basically, trading money for titles was a big deal. The real heiress Consuelo Yznaga, The Duchess of Manchester, made money, helping other heiresses find their feet once they got into England. This just fascinated me, and I thought to myself, what would this be like 10 years after the wedding? She was quite an amazing woman.
EC: How would you describe Frances’ sister-in-law, Fiona?
DF: Fiona is the perfect best friend. I wish she were my best friend. She’s fun loving. If you saw her from the outside, you would think she was frivolous. But she really is clever, and she somehow manages to be the person people confide in. So, she tends to know people’s secrets, but she doesn’t tend to divulge them. She’s a very loyal, good friend, and like I said, I wish she was mine.
EC: Next book?
DF: It takes place in March 1901 right after Queen Victoria’s death. The title is A Royal Guide to Secrets and Murder. It’s going to be a fall book of 2027.
THANK YOU!!
***
BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Life fell apart for Mannie Wallace after her daughter’s best friend was abducted from the playground right under Mannie’s nose. Six years later, Mannie is working as an engineer turned insurance investigator and barely holding the pieces of her family together. When an eccentric developer hires her to survey an infamously haunted Gilded Age mansion, Stone Mad Castle, it could be just the thing she needs to get her career and life back on track.
But once inside the abandoned castle, her dream job becomes a nightmare when the motley crew of investigators discovers a dead body in the basement and Mannie starts seeing ghosts. Probing deeper into the mansion, she begins to suspect that Stone Mad’s sinister past may be connected to the little girl she lost. Her daughter, now fourteen and obsessed with true crime, is convinced that girls have been mysteriously disappearing near the haunted house at an alarming rate for more than a century.
Twist follows twist, like the hidden passageways that honeycomb the castle, as Mannie risks everything to unravel the mansion’s secrets and uncover the fate of her daughter’s missing friend. In the end, Mannie must solve the mystery of Stone Mad once and for all … or become the next chapter in its haunted story.
STONE MAD by D.M. Pulley is an atmospheric horror/thriller featuring a haunted historic Cleveland Gilded Age mansion, called Stone Mad, and the architectural engineer, Mannie Wallace, who is hired to evaluate it. With stories of decades of paranormal hauntings, madness and death, and missing young girls, can Mannie survive Stone Mad?
Mannie Wallace’s life fell apart on the day her daughter’s best friend disappeared on a trip to the beach under her supervision. Six years later, after a breakdown, a divorce, and moving with her two children to her grandparents’ old home in Cleveland Hts., Mannie is trying to get her life and reputation back on track. Mannie receives a call from an eccentric developer who wants a survey of the mysterious Stone Mad mansion to turn it into a boutique hotel. This is just the chance she needs.
As Mannie works in the mansion, she discovers hidden stairs and spaces in walls, as well as room measurements that do not add up. Mannie also begins to see ghosts of young girls who all remind her of her daughter’s missing friend and is worried she may be having another breakdown, but then a real girl is discovered dead in the basement. Mannie’s true crime obsessed daughter believes young girls have gone missing from around the mansion for more than a century. When she and her friend go on their own to investigate, they disappear, and Mannie is now in a race to discover all the secrets of Stone Mad once and for all.
This story would be a good horror/thriller read at any time of the year, but it has all the spook factor and chills you really want for the Halloween season. Mannie is a complicated protagonist who you can find difficult to like, but you also can feel empathy for her. The story has flashback chapters at the beginning of each section that give the reader more history of the mansion and the girls who disappeared. While I felt the beginning dragged a bit, it continued to pick up speed as more of the history and the present came together to a gripping climax. I love this author’s books and how they pull from actual locations in my hometown, not just the historic buildings, but also the restaurants and neighborhoods. The story also includes many interesting architectural facts, as well as historical facts.
I recommend this eerie horror/thriller that keeps you guessing while you are on the edge of reality, sanity, and the paranormal.
***
About the Author
D.M. Pulley lives in Northeast Ohio with her husband, two children and dog, Hobo. Before becoming an Amazon bestselling author, Pulley worked as a Professional Engineer rehabbing historic structures and assessing building failures. Her survey of a vacant building in Cleveland, Ohio inspired her debut, THE DEAD KEY, the winner of the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
Since then, Pulley has published four more novels inspired by true crime and real buildings, and she has sold over 800,000 books worldwide. Her thriller NO ONE’S HOME was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award and named one of the “Best of Horror” by Suspense Magazine The abandoned buildings, haunted houses, and buried past of the Rust Belt continue to inspire her work. Her latest Gothic thriller, STONE MAD, is the story of a haunted house, a missing girl, and the woman who connects them.
Miri Schrock never expected to inherit anything after months of caring for Old Tom Yoder, so upon his passing, she’s stunned to learn he’s left her everything. But Tom’s family is equally shocked, and Miri is not sure she can rightfully accept an inheritance that clearly belongs to Tom’s grandsons.
Moses Yoder thought he knew his grandfather, but his decision to leave the Lancaster County family farm to Miri has Moses questioning everything. Now he’s caught between his family’s demands that Miri surrender what’s rightfully theirs and his own growing romantic attraction toward her. As Moses and Miri are drawn together, they must navigate family tensions, yet discovering the truth behind the inheritance may change everything they thought they knew about love, family, and God’s plan for their future.
***
Elise’s Thoughts
Through The Valley by Patricia Johns is a story involving two women who are not traditional Amish. Miri Schrock would rather be out in the field and tending to the cows and the farm rather than be inside cooking, cleaning, and sewing. Tabitha Schrock, years ago during her rumspringa, left the Amish community to become a veterinarian.
Tabitha ended up marrying an Englisher, Michael. Sadly, their marriage ended in divorce. Tabitha never really felt at home with Englishers so she decided to return to her Amish people. The one barrier she couldn’t break down was being a divorced woman. Despite her longtime friendship with Jonas and a growing love between them, she knew she would never be allowed to remarry if her ex-husband was still alive. She needed to move on with her life and she encouraged Jonas to move on, get married, and have a family.
But life takes an unexpected turn when Tabitha finds out her ex-husband has died. A lawyer reaches out to Tabitha to inform her Michael’s widow, Kelsie, wants to speak with her. After some consideration, Tabitha meets with her and the two discover the unkindness in Michael and his manipulative ways.
In another plot line, Tabitha’s cousin Miri Schrock has been helping Tom Yoder whose heath has continued to decline. She’s the one who has been tending to Tom’s daily needs as his grandsons, Moses and Benuel, are outside taking care of the farm. While Tom’s family knew that he was sick, his sudden passing was a surprise. At the reading of Tom’s will, it is announced that he left the farm to Miri.
The story weaves multiple plotlines and characters together. She does a fabulous job in having characters from previous novels in the story continue in this one. Readers will be sad to see this great series coming to an end.
***
Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Idea for the story?
Patricia Johns: I knew how the book, the whole series was going to end when I started writing it. This was something that I had planned from the very beginning. So, it was a well-planned series.
EC: There are two heroines in this story: are they alike or different?
PJ: Tabitha from early books is one heroine and Miri is the other. I think they’re similar. I mean, they’re cousins. They both don’t quite fit into the feminine mold that the Amish expect from them. I think they both struggle with a similar situation where they don’t quite fit in in the same way. But, of course, with Tabitha, she’s divorced, and is dealing with the other woman from her marriage, trying to connect with her and make peace. Miri has the community set against her because of this inheritance, which has gone terribly, terribly wrong in the community’s eyes.
EC: How would you describe Miri?
PJ: She’s a tomboy, inquisitive, good instincts, complex, vulnerable, stubborn, and moral.
EC: What about Moses, one of the heroes?
PJ: He is hardworking and kind, also passionate. I would think he’s moral too, but conflicted about his feelings and what he wants in life. His grandfather was supposed to leave the farm to him, and his brother. Since the death Moses is suffering from a personal loss, and he’s dealing with a personal rejection from his grandfather. He can’t even go and ask his grandfather, ‘Why? What did you do it? What upset you?’ He can’t even ask for query because his grandfather is gone. So, I think he’s dealing with a lot. The family land left to Miri had his father and grandfather grow up on this land, so, there’s family connections to this. He worked this land since he was a little boy. And, suddenly, he’s cut out of it. So, I think he has a lot more that he must deal with. Personally, I had some empathy for him for all of that because he was dealing with a lot.
EC: How would you describe the grandfather, Tom Yoder?
PJ: He had a unique way of looking at the world, and he encouraged Miri. He taught her about cattle and how to run a farm, passing on the passion he had about his farm, which partly explains why he left the farm to her. He’s a little bit of an enigma because he was such a straight talker, yet, he did not talk straight about this with his family, and he should have.
EC: What about the relationship between Miri and Moses?
PJ: He’s trying not to take it out on Miri, believing this isn’t her fault. He’s trying to protect Mari from his family, who are blaming Miri for what happened. She was supported by her parents. But Moses’ parents questioned his desire just to fulfill his grandfather’s wishes. He resents her in some ways and she’s kind of angry at him. They don’t trust the other person as just being honest and open with their feelings. Especially when the things are overheard.
EC: Did the community play a role with Tabitha and Miri?
PJ: With Tabitha, there is no solution that will please the community, because she’s divorced, and there’s no undoing it. There’s no way of fixing her situation in the eye of the community. But I think with Miri she could do what the community wanted, and she could say, ‘all right, I’ll back out. I’ll hand this back.’ Regarding Tabitha, community has written Tabitha off in a lot of ways. They’re like, ‘well, she’s going to be different. There is no helping her.’ But for Miri, they still think that they can sort of get their hands in there and mold her to their liking. I think there’s more pressure on Miri to change, because they think that she’s young enough, and she can be molded.
EC: What about the Tabitha and Jonas relationship?
PJ: He sees her as accomplished, gentle, and funny. They have feelings for each other, but hide it. She feels she lost his friendship when he possibly will become engaged. They both realize they fell in love with their best friend. And she’s jealous of the other woman, but she kind of hides it. She thinks it’s morally wrong to be jealous of this other woman, but she is very jealous. She has everything that Jonas could possibly want for the rest of his life, and she will be truly happy with him for the rest of her life, because he is a faithful type. They want a happily ever after, but don’t see how they can achieve it.
EC: What is the role of Kelsie, the other woman who broke up Tabitha’s marriage?
PJ: I needed it to bring things back around for Tabitha to deal with, the pain of that divorce. On a personal level, the reason why I brought in the other woman is because I’ve seen this sort of situation, with people that I know, where it’s never just one affair. It’s never just like, ‘oh, he did it once and he would never do it again.’ There’s always a pattern. And even when the woman has been duped and she doesn’t see the pattern yet, there’s normally a pattern there. And so, I’ve sort of seen that with women that I know who have been cheated on by their cheating exes, and have discovered, ‘oh, there was a pattern, and I had no idea when I was in the middle of it.’ I wanted to give Tabitha that opportunity to see the pattern because she sort of blamed herself thinking, ‘I was different. I was Amish. I wasn’t English enough. We didn’t quite connect. I was embarrassing to him.’ I needed Tabitha to be able to forgive herself and to be able to see that she had been enough all along, and she was never the problem. It was always him who was the problem, not her. I really needed Tabitha to see that. It wasn’t because she wasn’t enough. It was because he had personal issues that made him incapable of fidelity. I wanted to give her that opportunity to really deal with it, and it was a painful dealing, but at the end of it, she could move on with her own love, realizing, ‘I do have a lot to offer.’ She absolutely is the whole package.
EC: Next books?
PJ: Coming out the end of February the book called Her Amish Secret Admirer. This is the last book in the “Amish Chocolate Shop Brides Series.” The setting is a little Amish town and the stories center around the girls who work there. In this book, the owner of the shop receives a secret admirer letter. And she has no idea who this person could possibly be. The secret admirer is her best friend who lives next door. He’s widowed. He was trying to cheer her up. He sends another one, just to try and smooth things over to keep her happy. They end up in the situation where he’s sending these letters and he’s sort of teasing her a little bit. He’s like, ‘ooh, you’re getting letters.’ Mayhem ensues, and it all circles around the right people getting married.
Another book is titled, Amish Country Christmas, and it is about the third sister in the “Honest Antiques Shop miniseries.” Her old friend ghosted her. And they had been best, best, best friends. Now, he’s a cop, he’s back, and he’s widowed. He has a young son. She is his young son’s second grade teacher, and is also running an antiques shop with her sisters. The cops are trying to root out the criminal element, and they need her help. There is a Christmas element and a mystery where the cops are trying to figure out who’s harassing this Amish community. It has romantic suspense. Both the hero and heroine are English but are involved with the Amish community.
THANK YOU!!
***
BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Patti Eddington should have known when she married her veterinary student boyfriend that she would spend anniversary and birthday dinners not sitting at tables at fancy restaurants but kneeling under a surgery table in a cocktail dress, desperately trying to mop up a steady stream of blood and urine with cheap paper towels. She should have guessed that every knock at the door or ring of the phone would mean her husband would be torn away from the family for hours—sometimes returning deflated, sometimes smiling. But she could never have dreamed that her beautiful, curly-haired young daughter would one day bathe and sleep with an inflatable tick (until the day it was mysteriously punctured by a salad fork) or that she would go through her marriage of forty-five years opening every freezer door with caution.
DON’T LOOK IN THE FREEZER: The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian’s Wife by Patti Eddington is an entertaining nonfiction series of essays/memoir on the author’s life as the wife of a veterinarian and their pets throughout the years. While many of the chapters are humorous there are also many poignant moments throughout.
If you are a lover of animals, I do not see how you could not enjoy this book. Our family had many of the pet animals described in Patti’s family, so I can relate to the good and bad. Everyone has had that “good” pet or “crazy” pet that no matter what, you loved them and mourned their passing. This book though includes the other side of the story about the dealings with pet parents and interruptions to the doctor and his family’s personal lives that they dealt with.
This is a book for all pet lovers and is an unfiltered look at this author’s life and pets.
***
About the Author
Patti Eddington is a newspaper and magazine journalist whose favorite job ever was interviewing the famous authors who came through town on book tours. She never dreamed of writing about her life because she was too busy helping build her husband’s veterinary practice, caring for her animal obsessed daughter—whose favorite childhood toy was an inflatable tick—and learning to tap dance. Then fate, and a DNA test, led her to a story she felt compelled to tell. Today, the mid-century modern design enthusiast and Jazzercise instructor enjoys being dragged on walks by her ridiculous three-legged dog, David, and watching the egrets and bald eagles from her deck on a beautiful bayou in Spring Lake, Michigan.
