Every Good Gift


 
 
 
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Epigraph
 Contents
 Featured Families
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 Chapter 29
 Chapter 30
 Chapter 31
 Chapter 32
 Chapter 33
 Chapter 34
 Chapter 35
 Chapter 36
 Chapter 37
 Chapter 38
 Chapter 39
 Chapter 40
 Chapter 41
 Chapter 42
 Chapter 43
 Chapter 44
 Chapter 45
 Discussion Questions
 Acknowledgments
 Glossary of Deutsch
 About the Author
 Acclaim for Kelly Irvin
 Also by Kelly Irvin
 Copyright
 
 
 
 
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 Dedication
 
 
 To Tim, love always.
 
 
 
 
 
 Epigraph
 
 
 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
 Psalm 139:14
 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
 Romans 8:28
 
 
 
 
 
 Featured Families
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Chapter 1
 
 The nausea that had plagued Maisy Glick for three months pummeled her. Her hands went to her still-flat stomach as if she
 could calm it with a mere touch. She swallowed the bile in the back of her throat.
 
 
 “Nate, say something. Please.”
 
 Nate Taylor was already mentally a hundred miles gone, racing down Missouri’s back roads, Jamesport in his rearview mirror.
 They sat in his pickup, headlights blazing in the darkness, under an enormous bur oak just outside the fence. His lazy grin
 had disappeared when Maisy said the words “in a family way.” His hickory-brown eyes that always warmed her with the slightest
 glance filled with fear. He didn’t meet her gaze.
 
 
 Instead he got out of the truck and hopped over the barbed-wire fence that separated the dirt road from the meadow where Maisy’s
 neighbors pastured their horses. A quiet place with no ears to overhear. Except the beautiful Morgans that grazed nearby.
 One raised its head and whinnied.
 
 
 Nate stopped, but his desire to put space between Maisy and himself had been apparent in his hurried stride through the tall
 grass and weeds. “I don’t know what to say. We were done. I haven’t seen you in two months.”
 
 
 Say it’ll be all right. Say you know what to do.
 
 They’d both known it couldn’t last. He was English. She was Plain. He was headed to college in a few weeks. Maisy knew she
 would never leave her faith—not even for a man who’d stolen her heart in the most unexpected manner.
 
 
 Nate with his Wrangler jeans and his straw cowboy hat covering his thick tangle of wheat-colored curls. He loved his truck—probably
 more than he’d ever cared for her. His family went to the Baptist church in Gallatin most Sunday mornings. He called himself
 a backsliding Baptist when Maisy had asked him if he believed in God.
 
 
 Maisy slipped through the gate—her days of climbing fences in a dress had passed not so long ago—and followed him. Grasshoppers
 whizzed past her, their bodies dark against the brilliant headlights. Searching for words adequate to the occasion, she brushed
 away gnats and mosquitoes with sweaty hands.
 
 
 Nate still didn’t meet her gaze. “This isn’t the first time this has happened to a Plain girl.”
 
 That