Letters to Emily

HANNAH ZARTMAN lives in her dream home and is a multi-talented housewife. She has nine children, a husband who needs her, and a farm to help manage. She can milk a cow, deliver piglets, churn butter, sew quilts, spin, and even shoot a bear if necessary. It looks as if she has it all together. Letters to Emily is the story of a year in the life of a struggling Pennsylvania farm family, told with insight into the everyday realities of being a woman with nine children and her coming to terms with God's role in her life. The problem is, the farm is approaching financial disaster, Hannah is expecting a baby and the tidal wave of life is about to overwhelm her. In 1798, life is not quite as simple as it first appears.

Hannah Zartman ran away from her affluent home in New York City at the age of nineteen to marry the man of her dreams, a Hessian mercenary turned colonist. By 1798, their log cabin is home to nine children and Hannah is proficient in milking, delivering piglets, sewing and even shooting marauding bears. Now she is expecting a baby, the farm is on the brink of financial disaster and the tidal wave of life is about to overwhelm her. Can Hannah's faith carry her through the challenges that face her? Letters to Emily draws the reader into a year of frontier life as the struggles Hannah faces change her and make her stronger. These events test her faith and her family ties. Hannah's letters home to her sister Emily are her platform to contemplate her relationship with her husband, with God, and her plans to regain control of her situation. The story climaxes as Hannah finally comes to grips with her inner struggles and realizes she cannot throw away everything she and Georg have built, nor can she control life to turn out to her liking. Life is in God's hands. Both Hannah and Georg come to the realization that though neither one of them is the perfect spouse, they are stronger together.

Miriam Ilgenfritz lives on a small farm in central Pennsylvania with her husband, four of their children, golden retrievers, basset hounds, and a plentiful garden, but she is most well known for being the mother of sixteen children, ages 38-15, and Grandma to 35. Miriam has degrees in both cross-cultural communication and elementary education and has been pursuing writing now that most of her children have left the nest. She is the author of The Ties That Bind – One Man, One Woman, Sixteen Children, a humorous look at life in the farm lane, and Letters to Emily, a historical fiction set in 1798 in the very valley where she lives. Currently, she is working on two other novels and a sequel to Letters to Emily. In her "spare" time she reads voraciously and occasionally trains for long-distance races. Running affords the perfect opportunity to think up ideas for another book or just the next chapter. When she is not running, reading, or writing, she is usually ankle-deep in laundry, cooking, or dishes.