A hearty welcome to fellow-author, Ada Brownell!
Ada writes historical Christian fiction, and her latest novel, Love’s Delicate Blossom, book 3 in her Peaches and Dreams series, is full of historical details and a heroine that will definitely fight for what is right!
Here’s a blurb!
Edmund Pritchett III wants to marry Ritah Irene O’Casey, but she says wait. The beautiful redhead stands between Henry Hunter and Tulip, the orphan girl he kidnapped to work in his brothel, and he’s not giving up.
Excited about being one of the few women to go to college in 1917, Ritah hopes to become a teacher who can enable widows to keep and care for their children instead of putting them in an orphanage, or giving them up for adoption.
She also wants to teach mothers about prevention and treatment of disease, in an era when few have access to a doctor. She ends up fighting for the lives of injured soldiers in an Army health clinic, and finds her own life affected by illness and sorrow.
When Ritah takes a teaching job, a handsome farmer edges his way into her heart. But Edmund Pritchett III isn’t giving up, and neither is Henry Hunter, who suddenly seems to have plenty of money to build his house of ill repute.
Will Rita be able to continue to fight for women and families, decide on the man she loves, and defend herself and her students when Henry Hunter bursts into the school shooting a pistol?
Wow! I’m ready to read this one!
Here’s Ada’s post, with a closer look at Love’s Delicate Blossom’s story!
Scary moments turn into smiles
By Ada Brownell
When a girl believes God is with her and directing her life, fear is unseated by faith.
Take Ritah O’Casey when she’s trying to save her orphaned friend, Tulip, age fourteen, from the man who kidnapped and drugged her. He is building a brothel.
Ritah and her brother, Bud, find Tulip in an old house where Henry Hunter imprisons her. They don’t have much time because Ritah is leaving for college. They find Mrs. Bancroft, a spunky old lady, to help Tulip while Ritah is gone.
Hunter realizes what is happening and he goes after Ritah and her brother. Bud hunts for the sheriff and while he’s gone, Hunter shoots into the barn where Ritah and Tulip hide. Gun ready, Hunter opens the barn door and Ritah stands behind it with a shovel and whacks him on the head like she used to kill rattlesnakes with a hoe for Mama in Kansas. Hunter goes down, sunny-side up, and his open eyes are sightless—at least for now.
Hunter breaks into Mrs. Bancroft’s house, hoping to snatch Tulip. He carries a pistol, nabs the girl, and drags her toward the door. Ritah has no weapon, but picks up a tree branch and then spies a black snake stretched out in the sunshine near the front door. A few quick turns of the wrist, and the huge snake dangles from the end of the branch. As calm as can be the young woman walks into the house, her new black friend pointing the way with his head and red tongue seeking the target. With a deep-throat-ed cry, Hunter releases his prey, and while he flees, Tulip locks the door behind him.
Yet the man will not give up. About a week later while Tulip and Mrs. Bancroft are preparing the garden for planting, Hunter shows up again.
Tulip smiles. “How about helping us spade up this garden plot?”.
“Not on your life,” Hunter says. “I did my last farm work for your pa.”
“Oh, oh,” Tulip says, “Spring is mating season and our snakes will be out and about. Don’t step on them! They eat rodents and other garden pests.”
Hunter doesn’t move, but his eyeballs move back and forth.
“Look out! That place where you’re walking is one of their favorite underground nests! Don’t step on them!”
Maybe it was the nearby garden hose, but suddenly he took off and hit the gravel road, his boots echoing a rhythm in the distance.
But Tulip and Mrs. Bancroft aren’t through with Hunter. They knew he’ll be back, so they ask Mr. Lile if he’d give them a few rattles from the snakes he’d killed, and they tie them to the bushes beside the window. The sound is comforting to them every time the breeze blows, but for some reason Hunter never tries to come in that window again.
After things get more serious. Hunter is in jail, but he escapes, shoots the sheriff and comes for Ritah because he knows she is behind Tulip’s spunk. Well, really the Lord and Ritah. By this time Ritah is teaching school in Kansas and she now has two men with marriage in mind pursuing her. But Hunter finds her and barges into the classroom shooting his pistol. He’s shouting threats at Ritah, his trembling gun aiming at her. But he’s drunk. Ritah, the tomboy part of her, throws an ink pot at him with the velocity the gal uses on the baseball diamond.
You have to read the story to understand what else happens, and how romance like a fragrant peach blossom brings beauty and amazing sweetness into her heart and the man she loves.
Love’s Delicate Blossom is a romantic historical suspense, and the humor helps balance the tension, the anger, danger, risks, and even tears as you slip into the skin of fascinating characters from 1917-1918.
About Ada
Ada Brownell is the author of seven books. She has written for Christian publications since age 15 and spent much of her life as a reporter for The Pueblo Chieftain in Colo.
A freckled redhead, in high school she won best actress in a one-act play contest and judges told her she should go to Hollywood as a comedienne. Instead, she became a wife, mother, writer and a veteran youth Christian education teacher. Most of her life Ada sang in Christian gospel groups, including the Damascus Singers and Praise Trio. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Ozarks Chapter of American Christian Writers.
She and her husband have five children, one in heaven, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Thanks, Ada, for sharing your gift for writing! If you’d like to connect with Ada, you can find her at her blog, Ink From an Earthen Vessel, and on her Amazon author page!
Happy Wednesday!
P.S. Are you as excited as I am?? SIX DAYS, people!!!! You can still pre-order HERE!!
Thanks for coming, Ada!!