Maureen Lang’s The Summer Harvest Bride takes readers to a unique part of rural 1851 Illinois where a grist mill is being built.
As included in The 12 Brides of Summer Collection, it’s a companion to her Christmas novella The Gift Wrapped Bride.
Pretty Sally, the shy young girl who played Mary in the nativity pageant, has grown up in the intervening three years and settled into a small town west of Chicago with her farming parents.
Still timid, she’s caught the eye of the mayor’s son–who is quite a catch in the small town.
Her sister Alice wants Sally to be happy, but she’s not sure the mayor’s son is the right man.
The status quo changes for Sally the day Lukas Daughton arrives with his father and brothers to build a controversial grist mill.
Suddenly the thought of “settling” for a marriage to someone who never once made her pulse speed makes Sally reconsider her future.
But can the townspeople, and Sally, trust men from far away with such an outlandish and expensive plan–especially when they won’t be around to see if it works?
Can a timid woman take a risk for a handsome man she wants to trust?
And will a traveling builder change his life for the love of a pretty girl?
Themes and Research
Maureen’s theme in The Gift-Wrapped Bride was one of forgiveness and grace. Her characters learned God could really change people if they let him.
Maureen took a different tack in The Summer Harvest Bride:
“I wanted to explore the idea that even though we might be comfortable, it might not be where God wants us. Not only is the placement of the mill in question (a comfortable spot, or a risky one?), but Sally must decide if safety found in following the apparently inevitable path is better than taking a risk, even if it results in a broken heart.”
A grist mill is an unusual setting for a story and not one Maureen had set out to use, but as happens with writers, the research caught her imagination.
“I was looking for something else when I came across the familiar name of one of the few working grist mills still in Illinois not far from where I grew up. That led me to another site about a recently built replica of another grist mill a little farther west.
Look at the size of that wheel!
Grist mills were necessary and farmers traveled from all over to use them, but this mill had a different twist to its location.
“The man who built the Franklin grist mill wanted to build the mill where it was most convenient for the town instead of right on a river bank. He engineered a plan to divert water from the spring head to fill his mill pond.
Some people in the town thought it was foolish to build a mill so far from the river. He proved them all wrong! I love a story like that, especially when it’s true.”
Maureen quickly arranged for a tour.
“I was fascinated to learn the local population contributed their time and money to completely rebuild a grist mill originally considered controversial because it didn’t sit right on the river.
They dug a trench from a nearby river’s fountainhead to fill their own mill pond. The more I learned about how some people in the town didn’t think the grist mill could run so far from the river—even though the actual placement would be more convenient to the town—the more my own story began to take shape.”
She enjoyed learning about the mill so much, she included as much information about it as The Summer Harvest Bride novella could hold!
“Being on scene helped in the writing. I always love putting the pieces of a story together, especially when I have some visuals to go along with my story. . . . .
It’s so much easier to envision my characters when I know what they would have seen. It makes everything come alive for me.”
To learn about Sally’s life in Chicago before her move to the small town,check out The Gift-Wrapped Bride, still available for only 99 cents here.
The author of a dozen books, Maureen Lang has been writing since childhood.
She lives with her family in the Midwest.
You can learn more about Maureen and her books at her website: www.maureenlang.com
She regularly blogs on the Christians Read website.
You can also find her on
Tweetables
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The 12 Brides of Summer Collection is available at all booksellers, or here.
For those looking for a complete collection of The 12 Brides of Christmas novellas, you can find the book here.
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