Misty Creek a historical story follows a heart-broken Elizabeth Beck as she travels across the countryside, settling in a little town called Misty Creek, where she plans to teach children and find a way to heal in peace. Isolated from everything she has ever known, Elizabeth faces difficulty, danger, and the threat of losing more than she had ever imagined. If you’re looking for a heartfelt read, this is a fantastic pick!
Kristina McBride – Author of One Moment
John Vander Velden’s premier novel of frontier inspiration and romance was a very rewarding story. His main character, Elizabeth Beck, is moving westward during the late 1800s, following a heartrending episode in her young life. She arrives in a far-flung valley amid the western plains, to the town of Misty Creek, where she encounters a wide variety of frontier folk, including a tall, handsome miller named Matthew. Elizabeth’s experiences as a teacher at the small local schoolhouse, her troubled emotions, the painful and gradual way her feelings are challenged and exposed, all make for page-turning anticipation. She learns to accept the quirks and demands posed by her new life, as well as the help and support of unexpected friends and allies, while she struggles with her mixed desires of either staying or returning to her former life. I was so impressed with the skill and tenderness with which the author unfolded the story of this admirable woman of faith, ambition, loyalty and loving sacrifice. Can’t wait to continue on to book 2: “Elizabeth’s Journey.”
Mark Aikins Author of Bru and Baccus (Book one of the Spiral Gap Files)
I
Elizabeth Beck suffers a transformative emotional trauma—the man she deeply loves, Jameson Elders, abandons her on their wedding day. Utterly devastated, she answers an advertisement for a new teacher’s position in Misty Creek, a small town in Kansas, a long way from her native Columbus, Ohio. This search for meaning and emotional restoration in what turns out to be a “barren wasteland” is sensitively depicted by Vander Velden: “When she had left Columbus, what seemed an eternity ago, she felt confident she would find freedom from painful memories. A new life, new possibilities but this emptiness, a world devoid of hope could not be the answer she sought.” She’s astonished by the bleakness of the land and the “seemingly unending emptiness,” conditions that force a hard, “tenuous life” on its inhabitants. But danger lurks even in the vast nothingness of her new environment—Elizabeth believes she is being spied on, even stalked, and discovers that five teachers before her left suddenly and without explanation. The author artfully juxtaposes the sullen wretchedness of Kansas’ prairies with the gloominess of Elizabeth’s broken heart. And an unlikely friendship she forges with local miller Matthew Sonnefelt—a “tall dusty man, a man of labor” who initially leaves her “repulsed”—is intelligently, delicately crafted. The story unfolds patiently, even languorously at times, but never slows to a tedious pace—Vander Velden’s precisely incisive prose and the plot’s simmering violence will keep readers reliably engrossed.
Kirkus Review
If Dr. Jameson Elders, the only man Elizabeth ever loved, a man of impeccable honor, could abandon her at the altar, then how could she trust any man with her heart.
Driven by the pain and disappointment of her love’s desertion on her wedding day, Elizabeth Beck leaves all she knows behind, traveling west to teach the children of the valley known as Misty Creek. She finds the valley very different than the windblown prairie, the broad land covered with swaying dried up grass of her travels, for it is a vibrant, fertile land alive and green. Though the valley resembles the familiar countryside of central Ohio, in Misty Creek Elizabeth faces a very different life. Isolated from the all things she has known, she must face difficulties, dangers, and deal with the pain she had hoped to leave behind. But she also builds lasting friendships and finds that the heart yearns for what she is certain it cannot have.
Misty Creek is Elizabeth’s story….
Available online at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Kobo
An Excerpt from Misty Creek
Later, much later, she awoke in the dark, in a strange room, in a strange place, deep in a strange land. Elizabeth drew the chair to an open window. There she sat looking out into the night. Even now Elizabeth could feel the slight touch of the breeze against her skin, the wind that seemed never to cease. On that breeze came the sounds of the night. The sounds of creatures near and far, creatures she had never heard before. Odd short hoots, an owl of some sort she felt certain. A distant wolf-like howl similar to what she had heard earlier set the dogs of the community off to barking. Insect’s sounds, crickets and katydids, filled her ears. And above it all was the sky, cloudless and simply ablaze with countless points of light. Those lights were more than stars, more than any stars she had ever witnessed. Looking upward took her breath away and caused a tremble deep within. She understood, at least a little, of what the pastor had said. And seeing those stars in that canvas of black, Elizabeth found she could not look away for several minutes.
Elizabeth sat there her mind flooded with so many thoughts. She drew a breath as she considered just how far from home she had wandered. She went back to nights years ago, her mother brushing out the tangles in her hair. A time when many thought she would never become a lady. Those days she could wrestle Mitchel Dogerty to submission. But she had not been a child for a long time, and though she had not lived all those years in her parents’ house on Elm Street, having taught for three years in the small Ohio town of London, the ache of homesickness filled her. Closing her eyes a moment she could almost smell breakfast’s bacon greeting her with the sun as it slipped through the white curtains of her yellow bedroom. The sight of her father and his paper. The smell of coffee mixed with his aftershave when she greeted him each morning. How far away she felt. But far away was what she had wanted. Something alien to the world that had always been her life.
Now as she opened her eyes to the diamond sparkled sky, she wondered if she had entered a world too different. Elizabeth swallowed as she looked across the open prairie. Sitting there allowing the gentle breeze to pass her cheeks and move an errant strand of hair, the thoughts of home seemed to be pushed aside by the children she had met here on the boundary of humanity. There was something familiar in them, something that all children seemed to have in common. She smiled at the thought and sat by the window until the drowsiness came. Softly it came. It arrived with a calmness she had not felt in a very long time. A smile formed on her tired lips, and in the dark, the weary teacher made her way to the bed and found sleep waiting.
