Katie's Song
Eileen's inspirational historical novel.
Katie Shelton, nineteenth-century "granny-medicine doctor," shares an unwilling alliance with Dr. Denver Holt to care for his daughter. Unless Katie can forget her bias toward "diploma" doctors like Denver, and accept his love, she will not return that love and allow God to place a new song in her heart.
Katie’s Song won an EPPIE award and received glowing reviews.
To order a copy of Katie’s Song, or the sequel, Katie's Tomorrow, contact the publisher at www.hardshell.com
Below you can read the first few paragraphs of Katie’s Song.
Ten minutes before Katie dismissed her fourteen restless students for the day, nine-year-old Greg Pianucci clutched his abdomen and groaned. Now what? Katie thought, wondering what else could go wrong this first day of school. Teaching children was not turning out to be what she had expected.
Within the first hour of school, Greg's younger brother Doug had smeared ink all over his hands, face, and tattered clothing. Horse racing during recess, Norman Pascal had fallen off his mare, ripped his pants, and sprained his ankle. Vera Haltar had accidentally dropped her homemade, wooden doll into the outhouse hole. From a student who confessed he planned to fish in Bad River after lunch instead of returning to school, Katie had confiscated a fishing pole with which she rescued the fallen doll. And now Katie's once-neat bun at the back of her neck sprouted long tendrils of black hair, making her look as if she had just climbed out of bed.
A month ago, when Katie and Pa had moved to this rolling prairie southwest of the town of Twin Rivers in Dakota Territory, she had planned to leave the specter of death behind them, buried with her beloved mother. But death haunted the whole West, even in this one-room schoolhouse. This morning, Edith Robert had informed Katie that her sister would not be returning to school this year because she had died during summer vacation. Knowing that diseases such as smallpox, scarlet fever, and consumption stalked the West of 1880 like coyotes shadowing their prey, Katie had cringed at the news. Thinking about the dead girl made Katie want to hide her face in her hands and weep for the whole Robert family, but she knew she had to be brave for Edith and the other students.
And now what was the matter with Greg Pianucci who continued to moan as if in terrible pain? The ankle-length skirt of her plain, brown, calico dress swished against her cotton-stockinged ankles as Katie rushed toward his desk where he doubled over it and sobbed. His older sister, Lori, who shared the double desk and bench with him patted him on the back and tried to console him.