Leah’s Garden Series
by Lauraine Snelling, with Kiersti Giron
Seeds of Change
Larkspur Nielsen is ready for change, frustrated by the small mindedness of her Ohio hometown and its lack of opportunity for her or her younger sisters. But the push to leave comes faster than she ever expected when several of her bold actions for justice earn her vindictive enemies. Overnight, they must pack up and ready to make a new life out West, hoping to escape notice and any opportunities for revenge.
Knowing that four women traveling together will draw unexpected attention, Larkspur dons a disguise, passing herself off as “Clark” Nielsen accompanying his three sisters. But maintaining the ruse is more difficult than Larkspur imagined, as if protecting her headstrong, starry-eyed sisters from difficult circumstances and available young men. Will reaching a safe place to call home ever be possible?
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A Time to Bloom
Delphinium Nielsen and her sisters have accomplished much in the past year, traveling west and settling in Nebraska. They are on their way to building a garden in dedication to their mother and working against the forces of nature to make their farm thrive. However, none of that can mask their concern that they are quickly running out of money. Del’s work teaching in their booming town offers hope, not only to support her sisters financially, but also to better her students’ lives. Not all of the town sees it that way, though, with the rebuilding of the schoolhouse continually neglected and her brightest student’s father demanding he work the farm instead of attend class.
When their brother Anders arrives with his war-wounded and heartbroken friend RJ, Anders sees the strength of the sisters’ idea to start a boardinghouse and decides to invest in it. Del finds RJ barely polite and wants nothing to do with him. But despite Del and her sisters’ best-laid plans, the future–and RJ–might surprise them all.
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Fields of Bounty
Lilac Nielsen’s dream has come true: handsome young Reverend Ethan Pritchard has finally noticed her. Yet she must balance this new courtship with the pursuit of another dream–the publication of her artwork in a New York paper. She has secretly been submitting a series of drawings under a pen name, and if anyone traces the drawings back to her and finds out where Lilac and her sisters settled, the entire Nielsen family could be in danger.
As their family farm expands and Lilac’s relationship with the reverend grows, it’s a time of new beginnings. But when a family crisis back in Ohio shakes the Nielsen sisters, can they continue to build the new life they’ve begun in Nebraska? And will Lilac be prepared for what God has in store for her future?
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Kiersti’s Novels (not yet published)
Beneath a Turquoise Sky
Two hearts, two cultures find hope for healing…
When crisis forces Tse and Caroline to make a choice, will they find a path together…or will the chasm between their peoples be too great to span?
Beneath a Turquoise Sky won the ACFW Genesis Award – Historical in 2013
Remember the Wind
Veronica lost her father. The World War II vet lost his daughter. Can God craft the broken pieces of their hearts into a whole?
Journalist Veronica Lee isn’t happy about being pregnant, no matter what her husband, Nathan, thinks. Now the news that something is wrong with her unborn baby threatens to tear her carefully held-together life apart. She’s already got plenty to handle adjusting to a move from Los Angeles to rural New Mexico so Nathan can take over his family’s business. If growing up the daughter of a Vietnam vet with PTSD has left Veronica doubting her ability to mother even a healthy child, how will she handle a baby with special needs?
Then there’s Fred Charley, the Navajo Code Talker she’s been assigned to profile for the local paper—much to her dismay. Fred’s raw memories of boarding school and war in the Pacific resurrect pieces of Veronica’s past she’d rather forget. Yet she’s drawn to the elderly man, with a growing passion to not only tell his story but also mend the fragments of her own heart.
With her marriage and her faith stretched to the breaking point, will Veronica find healing and strength in time to face the biggest challenge of her life?
Fire in My Heart
He is driven by duty and burdened by the past. She just wants to make things right again. Can they find atonement together?
It’s 1863, and passionate young abolitionist Lucinda Mae Allen has found her niche fighting for equality amid Washington D.C. society. But when tragedy leaves her alone with compromised health, she must leave the friends she loves and travel west to her estranged father at the remote outpost of Fort Tejon, California. When she discovers injustice rages on the frontier as well—and that her father may be hiding a terrible secret—Lucinda must face whether the zeal in her heart can withstand the burden of sins from the past.
Lieutenant Isaiah Cooper, beari
ng scars from the Indian Wars and the loss of his young wife, just wants to keep the peace at Fort Tejon and do his duty to not be demoted…again. But when he discovers several hundred Paiute Indians held unjustly at the fort, memories are roused that he has long tried to bury. He and Lucinda join forces for the rights of the Paiute, but the struggle births feelings between them that Isaiah isn’t ready for—and may never be.
When romance, murder, and wounds of the past clash in the urgency of the present, can Lucinda and Isaiah muster the courage to find forgiveness, healing, and even…love?
Fire in My Heart won the ACFW Genesis Award – Historical in 2018
Kiersti is represented by Wendy Lawton of Books & Such Literary Agency.
