A heart-stirring story about a woman's journey to self-discovery through art and her family's history. Forbidden. Hidden. Denied. Can art be powerful enough to endure? Ragni Clauson’s work, relationships, and body all seem to be falling apart. And she isn’t convinced that spending her vacation fixing up her great-grandmother’s cabin and supervising her rebellious teenage niece, Erika, will offer any much-needed rejuvenation. As Ragni and Erika clean, they begin to uncover the secret paintings and life of Nilda, Ragni’s ancestor who lived in the cabin in the early 1900s. Ragni doesn’t know how much she has in common with her great-grandmother, but it becomes clear Nilda faced her own struggles. Taking care of home and menfolk, fighting off locusts, raising her daughter, and finding time to paint in the midst of it all were not easy tasks. Will Nilda’s passion for enduring art re-ignite Ragni’s artistic soul a century later? Weaving together the stories of three generations of women, The Brushstroke Legacy stirs us to believe that no matter the circumstances, we are called to use our gifts—never knowing when they might bring a stranger to a new place of hope. Praise for The Brushstroke Legacy “ The Brushstroke Legacy is Lauraine Snelling at her best. Snelling paints a rich tapestry of setting and characters that pull the reader into the story immediately. An engrossing story!” –Colleen Coble, author of Fire Dancer “With deft strokes, Lauraine Snelling pens a story of one woman’s discovery of self...and the ties that bind generations of women together. The characters of The Brushstroke Legacy will live on in your heart long after you reach the final page.” –Carol Cox, author of Ticket to Tomorrow “Lauraine Snelling has once again proven why she is the beloved author of so many wonderful works of fiction. She has woven the past with the present in a heartstirring fashion.” –Eva Marie Everson, co-author of The Potluck Club Series Lauraine Snelling  has written more than sixty bestselling books, including The Healing Quilt, the Red River of the North historical series, and the award-winning novels An Untamed Land and Song of Laughter . Lauraine is a popular speaker and teaches at numerous conferences around the country. She and her husband, Wayne, make their home in California’s Tehachapi Mountains. Chicago, June 11, 2002 Her dream had been a lie. When Ragni woke, failure stung in the morning light. She fought to ignore the pull of the sheets tugging at her arm, dragging her back into the haze of twilight sleep where everything went away. The dream—what was the dream? Ah yes, she’d been painting with watercolors, a garden grown wild with bloom. She heard an alarm ring again, but this time it was the phone across the room, a sound that tore at her nerves like a car alarm stuck in perpetual squall. Bash it, drown it, drop it out of the second-story window. Ragni just wanted to turn off the phone and crawl back in bed, back to her dream. Through the sleepy haze, however, she recognized that if everything went right she could still make it to work on time. That’d be a nice change. For ten years, she’d been known for never being late. Now she had a warning note in her file for tardiness. She glared at the still-ringing phone. Ignoring the urge to lie back down, she stomped across the room and stayed standing, thumb punishing the Talk button. “Yes.” “My, my, a bit testy this morning, aren’t we?” It was Alisha, her boss’s assistant at Advantage Advertising, Inc.—or AAI, which could also be an acronym for a scream. Both fit. “Are we really?” Ragni matched saccharine tone for saccharine tone. This was all she needed—a conversation with Alisha before coffee. Alisha who saw herself more as savior than assistant. “You will be on time this morning.” The tone conveyed order rather than request. “Yes.” God willing and the el on time. “But not if I stand here visiting.” Ragni, you must regain the upper hand if you want to keep hold of your remaining sanity. “I called you last night to remind you to bring the dog biscuit file, but you didn’t answer and you didn’t return my call.” The urge to slam the Off button gnawed at her fingers. Ragni never liked the feeling of being in trouble with the principal—and this woman was neither her principal nor her boss. “I-I’m…” She cut off the urge to apologize and finished, “It is already in my briefcase.” Not that the file had ever been out of her briefcase. After arriving home close to nine the night before, she’d collapsed on the couch rather than reviewing the file and preparing for the morning meeting. When she woke enough to crawl into bed several hours later, she’d promised herself to get up early to go over the ad layouts. “Look, Alisha, if I don’t get off the phone, I won’t make the el, and if I don’t make the el…” She let the sentence run off deliberately. When Alisha started to speak again, Ragni interrupted. “Got another