Whispers of a New Dawn (46 page)
Read Whispers of a New Dawn Online
Authors: Murray Pura
“Some things for the worse, Beck.” He tilted up her chin with his hand. “But some things for the better.”
She tugged on his dog-tag chain as she looked up at him. “Your wife hasn’t had her first kiss of 1942 yet.”
“I can’t yet.”
“What do you mean you can’t yet?”
“Looking at you in this light is just amazing. I don’t want to close my eyes. Not even for a Becky Raven kiss.”
She laced her arms around his neck. “Perhaps I can encourage you to change your mind.”
“Your eyes are incredible. And your hair is like some kind of white gold. And your skin—”
“Shh. Enough.”
“—is like stardust.”
“Stardust.”
“And it’s all over you.”
She smiled and smoothed back his hair. “
Ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands
. Do you remember that?”
“Sure. It was in that letter you read me from your bishop in Pennsylvania. The one he wrote to Nate just before the attack.”
“So do you remember the rest of it?”
“I remember that it’s from Isaiah.”
“
Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off
. Nate thinks it’s about America now. America and the world coming back to life after years of blight and destruction and war. But I think it’s about us—you and me.”
He kissed each of her eyes. “How do you figure that?”
“We both lost people we cared for. When we met we started rough. It took a lot for us to admit we loved each other. It took a war to make me want marriage. It may be hell on earth tonight. But for us the love
is unstoppable no matter what gets thrown at us. We’ve come too far and we’ve fought through too much to toss away what we feel for each other and say it’s too hard. The Japanese won’t make me do it. Or the Germans. Fear won’t. Not even death. It’s this
everlasting
thing—you know?”
“Yeah. You make it all pretty clear.”
“You’re shipping out in the morning. But it’s not over between us. It never will be. Do you believe that, Christian?”
He put his lips gently to hers, the moon turning both of them into fire. “Yeah, Becky. I do.”
A
BOUT
M
URRAY
P
URA
…
M
urray Pura earned his Master of Divinity degree from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and his ThM degree in theology and interdisciplinary studies from Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. For more than 25 years, in addition to his writing, he has pastored churches in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and Alberta. Murray’s writings have been shortlisted for the Dartmouth Book Award, the John Spencer Hill Literary Award, the Paraclete Fiction Award, and Toronto’s Kobzar Literary Award. Murray pastors and writes in southern Alberta near the Rocky Mountains. He and his wife, Linda, have a son and a daughter.
Visit Murray’s website at
www.MurrayPura.com
.
Also, for more information about Harvest House books, please visit our website at
www.HarvestHousePublishers.com
and our Amish reader page at
www.AmishReader.com
.
If you loved W
HISPERS OF
A N
EW
D
AWN
, you’ll want to read about Jude and Lyyndy’s earlier adventure in Murray Pura’s
T
HE
W
INGS OF
M
ORNING
…
Jude Whetstone and Lyyndaya Kurtz, whose families are converts to the Amish faith, are slowly falling in love. Jude has also fallen in love with flying that newfangled invention, the aeroplane.
The Amish communities have rejected the telephone and have forbidden motorcar ownership but not yet electricity or aeroplanes.
Though exempt from military service on religious grounds, Jude is manipulated by unscrupulous army officers into enlisting in order to protect several other young Amish men. No one in the community understands his sudden enlistment and so he is shunned. Lyyndaya’s despair deepens at the reports that Jude has been shot down in France. In her grief, she turns to nursing Spanish flu victims in Philadelphia.
After many months of caring for stricken soldiers, Lyyndaya is stunned when an emaciated Jude turns up in her ward. Her joy at receiving Jude back from the dead is quickly diminished when the Amish leadership insists the shunning remain in force. How then can they marry without the blessing of their families? Will happiness elude them forever?
Book two in the Snapshots in History series…
T
HE
F
ACE OF
H
EAVEN
In April 1861, Lyndel Keim discovers two runaway slaves in her family’s barn. When the men are captured and returned to their plantation, Lyndel and her young Amish beau, Nathaniel King, find themselves at odds with their pacifist Amish colony.
Nathaniel enlists in what will become the famous Iron Brigade of the Union Army. Lyndel enters the fray as a Brigade nurse on the battlefield, sticking close to Nathaniel as they both witness the horrors of war—including the battles at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, and Antietam. Despite the pair’s heroic sacrifices, the Amish only see that Lyndel and Nathaniel have become part of the war effort, and both are banished.
And a severe battle wound at Gettysburg threatens Nathaniel’s life. Lyndel must call upon her faith in God to endure the savage conflict and to face its painful aftermath, not knowing if Nathaniel is alive or dead. Will the momentous battle change her life forever, just as it will change the course of the war and the history of her country?