An Arkansas Love Story . . . (The Shiloh Saga Book 2)
The story opens as Mac and Laurel MacLayne begin to break virgin soil to build a homestead together. They have survived a perilous journey across northern Arkansas in the first volume of this saga, In Search of Shiloh. The MacLaynes look back and can hardly believe they survived the trip. The weather was cold and wet. Roads, where they even existed, were obliterated by spring rains more days than not. Shelter was often a make-shift tent under the bed of the small wagon that carried Laurel’s family keepsakes. Those obstacles were small compared with the misunderstandings, arguments, and trampled feelings they caused each other, not in spite, but simply because they were strangers. Mac and Laurel had married after knowing each other only four days…a marriage of convenience to satisfy her dying father. They had pledged their lives together based on a common faith, a belief in a loving Father God, and a dream of Shiloh.
Shiloh is a dream so distant that the MacLaynes can hardly believe it’s within reach. Mac made promises to Laurel’s father that he has yet to keep. The tangible one is not impossible. He could erect a cabin and would with the help of his Shiloh church family, but that last promise to help Laurel understand she is a worthy person, valuable and esteemed by others, and more than that, by herself, seems more difficult every day. The fact that he won’t not allow himself to love her doesn’t help matters. Laurel will be his treasured friend and helpmate all his life, but he will never fall into that devastating trap of giving his heart to any woman again.
Laurel’s demons place obstacles between her and Mac. The shadows of the past hinted at in her nightmares blighted her life since she was fourteen. Mac took away her title of ‘Spinster of Hawthorn’ but not her sense of inadequacy. Laurel lives with the belief that she is plain and dull, fit to be a helpmate but little more and that Mac married her for that purpose. Only a growing faith, a connection with a community at Shiloh, and a sense of purpose in her role as the subscription school teacher begin to diminish Laurel’s sense of inadequacy so she learns she may become worthy … not loved or adored as other women, but cherished, by her husband.
As the story progresses, we see community celebrations common in frontier life. The Shiloh church celebrates frequent dinners on the grounds and Sunday afternoon singings. Ladies of the community welcome their new teacher with a quilting bee. Laurel gets the opportunity to witness a town debating contest when Mac participates with a local citizen and wins a contest by declaring that a “nagging wife is better than a smoking chimney because she plants her husband’s feet on the path to Heaven” as he has to pray for patience. The MacLaynes help raise a barn and go to a camp meeting, all a part of mid-nineteenth century life in northeast Arkansas.
Then Mac is called home to Maryland by his father. Mac’s mother is dying. Laurel remains behind to finish the school term and to take care of their homestead. Mac’s past is in Maryland. Perhaps his life was back there with his family. Laurel will live with the fear that Mac may not want to return to their arranged marriage as she has stepped across the boundary they had set. She declared her love for him. An encounter with the woman from his past and witnessing the precious love between his parents teach Mac a lesson he’d not understood in his youth. The love he’d been running from was what he wanted most in the world. The adolescent feelings he’d experienced before he’d gone to Arkansas led him to make fatally bad choices, but those feelings were not love. What he wanted waited for him at Shiloh…didn’t she?
