The first book in the Apple Creek Dreams series. Jerusha Springer has spent months making the most beautiful quilt anyone in Apple Creek, Ohio has ever seen, and she knows it is going to take first prize at the Quilt Fair in Dalton. The prize money will be her ticket out of the Amish way of life—away from the memories of Jenna, the daughter she lost a year ago and Reuben, her tormented husband, who has been missing since Jenna’s death.On the way to the fair, Jerusha gets caught in the Storm of The Century. An accident leaves her trapped in her driver’s car—and trapped by the memories of her marriage to Reuben and the loss of little Jenna. And then another littler girl enters the story and takes Jerusha’s heart captive in a way she hadn’t expected. Can this child also be the one to heal Reuben’s pain as well? A beautiful story of loss and redemption. I have over 500 books on my Kindle, but only nine books are listed under "Favorite Christian Books". Three of those nine are the Apple Creek Dreams Series. The characters are believable, lovable, flawed human beings. The plot grabs your attention right from the start and keeps it through all three books. That's not to say the plot starts in book one and runs straight through to the end of book three. There are many twists and turns - even a couple of loop-de-loops - but the end reaches a satisfying conclusion. Apple Creek is a real place... It is a village set in the heart of Wayne County, Ohio, eleven miles from Dalton and ten miles from Wooster. It has real streets and real people. Apple Creek and the surrounding area are home to a large Amish community and have been since the mid-1800s. Not far to the east lies Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the Amish first settled in America in 1720. I chose Apple Creek as the setting for A Quilt for Jenna while doing research on the Amish in Ohio and in particular on Amish quilt makers. Apple Creek, Dalton, and Wooster are known for the marvelous Amish quilts produced there. Dalton has one of the biggest quilting fairs in Ohio. A town named Apple Creek was just too good to pass up as a location, so I started my story there. I used the actual streets and highways, the localities, and even local family names in A Quilt for Jenna even though all the characters are fictitious and not based on real people. As I mentally planted myself in the heart of Apple Creek, the characters in the book began to spring out of the earth, fully grown, with lives and stories, joys and sorrows. The story was easy to write because it seemed as though I were reading someone's journal as I wrote it. The more I explored Apple Creek, the more I realized how connected I was to the village. My great-great-grandfather, Anthony Rockhill, was born forty-nine miles from Apple Creek in Alliance, Ohio, in 1828. Apple Creek is eighty-five miles from the site of Fort Henry, West Virginia, on the Ohio River. Fort Henry was the site of Betty Zane's run for life during the British and Indian siege during the Revolutionary War in 1782. The book Betty Zane by Zane Grey was a childhood favorite and still has a place on my bookshelf. As a child I poured over stories about Lewis Wetzel and Jonathan Zane and followed them through the trackless Ohio wilderness only a few miles from what would become the village of Apple Creek. Though I've never been there, I feel I know the area like the back of my hand. And so it was no coincidence that I came to choose Apple Creek. Though the characters in this book are fictional, they have become very real to me, as I hope they will become to you. And by the way, the horrific storm in A Quilt for Jenna is also real. Historians have called it the Great Appalachian Storm or even the Blizzard of the Century. At the time, of course, the people who lived in the path of this monster didn't have a name for it. They just hunkered down and tried to endure it. I hope the story of Jerusha Springer and her struggle to survive will touch a place in your heart as you read. Perhaps something of your own life will be changed for the better by the end of the book. So as I think about it, maybe it was coincidence that I chose Apple Creek. After all, coincidence is just God choosing to remain anonymous. Praise for Patrick Craig's A Quilt for Jenna... Patrick Craig writes with an enthusiasm and a passion that is a joy to read. He deals with romance, faith, love, loss, tragedy, and restoration with equal amounts of elegance, grace, clarity, and power. Everyone should pick up his debut novel in Amish fiction, turn off the phone and computer and TV, and settle in for a good night's read. Craig's book is a blessing. Murray Pura, author of The Wings of Morning and The Face of Heaven A good storyteller takes a fine story and places it in a setting peppered with enough accurate details to satisfy a native son. Then he peoples it with characters so real we keep thinking we see them walking down the street. A great storyteller takes all that and binds