Plain Refuge. Janice Kay Johnson

Plain Refuge

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He’s her only defense...and a frightening temptation

Rebecca Holt thinks she’s doing the right thing when she takes evidence proving her ex-husband is hiding a murder. But after two attempts on her life, she flees with her six-year-old son to rural Missouri, where the pair hide among Amish relatives, dressing “plain.”

County sheriff Daniel Byler was raised Amish, but his protective instincts put him in conflict with his family’s beliefs at an early age and he left the faith. Yet this background helps him to recognize Rebecca as someone who is out of place, in danger...and lying to him.

A slender Amish woman wearing the usual black bonnet stepped off the bus, reaching back to help a young boy down.

The boy pressed himself to his mother as she scanned her surroundings, her gaze stopping on Daniel in what he thought he read as alarm.

He straightened on a jolt of anger. One side of her face was discolored and swollen; the eye on that side opened only a slit. And something about him clearly triggered fear in her. Was it because, like most Amish, she was unwilling to report an assault and he was clearly a law enforcement officer?

The driver unloaded the last piece of luggage from under the bus and got back on board. With a deep sigh, the bus started down the street. None of the buggy horses so much as flapped an ear. It took something much stranger than that to bother them.

Daniel ambled forward, greeting folks he knew, stopping when he reached the Grabers and a cluster of Yoders who were enveloping the two newcomers.

Looking him in the eye, Samuel Graber stepped away from the group.

Protecting the woman and child? Daniel wondered.

“Sheriff.” Samuel’s greeting was pleasant but he didn’t smile. Behind Samuel, his wife was hugging the woman from the bus, while the blond boy gripped her skirts. His straw hat fell to the sidewalk. One of the many relatives picked it up.

Samuel’s message was not subtle: this is none of your business. But Daniel thought Samuel was wrong. Chances were the woman was escaping trouble of one kind or another. In his experience, trouble had a way of following people.

And the Amish were defenseless.

Dear Reader,

I confess: I’m a longtime fan of Marta Perry’s and Karen Harper’s romantic suspense novels set among the Amish. And then there’s the movie Witness, with Harrison Ford dancing in the barn. Temptation came my way. I became even more intrigued once I started reading nonfiction about the Amish, notably Donald Kraybill’s collaborations The Amish and Amish Grace. I found a whole lot to admire in beliefs that are very different than what we see in our typical lives. Forgiveness is not a concept we practice nearly often enough, for example. Their sense of community is extraordinary. Keeping their elderly close and caring for them through the end especially struck home with me, as I’m dealing with my mother’s sharp decline into dementia.

Plus I have always loved the clash of cultures (my two historical novels explore this). In this book, both Daniel and Rebecca are steeped in Amish culture because of their childhoods, yet as adults are thoroughly modern Americans. Raised to turn his other cheek, Daniel now carries a gun. Talk about internal conflict! Yet Rebecca’s need to save her son drives her to do what she thinks she must, even if it betrays her deepest beliefs.

No, sad to say, they don’t slip out late at night to dance in a barn. What they get up to out behind the barn, though...

Janice

Plain Refuge

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

An author of more than ninety books for children and adults, JANICE KAY JOHNSON writes about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. A USA TODAY bestselling author and an eight-time finalist for a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, she won a RITA® Award in 2008 for her Harlequin Superromance novel Snowbound. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small town north of Seattle, Washington.

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