Showing results by author "Lauraine Snelling" in All Categories

Lauraine Snelling, best-selling author of A Touch of Grace, transports listeners to the windswept plains of 1903 North Dakota. Despite disaster, Rebecca Baard still dreams of someday soaring beyond the family farm.

Award-winning historical novelist Lauraine Snelling delivers a compelling sequel to A Promise for Ellie. When 17-year-old Sophie abandons her North Dakota family in 1901, she never dreams tragedy will turn her again toward home. But she fears the loved ones she hurt will reject her - and that she'll never love again.

In 1910 Minnesota, Nilda Carlson's dreams are coming true. Though her first few months in America were difficult, her life now resembles the images that filled her daydreams in Norway. She and her younger brother Ivar live in their own house, just a short distance from her older brother and his family. Together they work the farm and fell trees for lumber. They plan to grow a dairy herd, weave rugs out of their own wool, and make skis to sell. Everything is going right. The only thing missing from Nilda's life is love.

In this series finale by Lauraine Snelling, Astrid Bjorklund is trying to stop the epidemic ravaging South Dakota’s Red Bud Indian Reservation. Tribal elders remain suspicious of her until some begin to recover. Although Joshua Landsverk longs to fix his broken relationship with Astrid, he opposes her present work but won’t tell her why. Yet when a surprising act of kindness brings healing to the painful wrong inflicted years ago, will it be enough to rekindle their love?

In Minnesota in 1911, Nilda Carlson is torn between society life in the city of Blackduck and spending time with her family back home on the farm. Still new to America herself, Nilda focuses on the area's immigrant community, but she'll have to fight to get her ideas accepted by the locals and donors alike. In the meantime, one of her greatest joys is her weekly piano lesson with the handsome schoolteacher, Fritz. But just as Nilda is beginning to realize she has feelings for him, a stylish, affluent young woman moves to Blackduck and monopolizes Fritz's attention.

For as far back as he can remember, the dream of becoming a writer has burned brightly in Thorliff's heart. But when he arrives at college, things are not as he had imagined. Thorliff longs for the familiarity and nurture of his loved ones back home. The distance has created a rift between Thorliff and his childhood sweetheart. The only bright spot in his life is his job at the town newspaper. Will he be forced to leave one dream behind to pursue the other?

Award-winning author Lauraine Snelling continues the story of Ruby Torvald in book two of her Dakotah Treasures series. Ruby's most recent boarder at the Dove House is schoolteacher Pearl Hossfuss. Avoiding an arranged marriage, Pearl has deserted her home in Chicago to teach in Little Missouri. There she has befriended Ruby and fallen for carpenter Carl Hegland. But her father threatens to take her back home. Ruby must turn to God for the strength to stand up to her father.

Astrid Bjorklund wants to use her medical training to serve God and feels that He might be leading her in the direction of missionary work. Smarting from a misunderstanding with Joshua Landsverk, the young man she thought she loved, she heads east to a missionary training school, hoping to eventually use her skills in some remote outpost in Africa. When she is called home unexpectedly to help in a family medical emergency, Astrid learns of a deadly measles outbreak on the nearby Indian reservation.

It is 1893, and the first generation of immigrants who came to America for the promise of free land and a good life for their children have finally achieved their dreams. They labored hard on the land and now have a bountiful heritage to pass on to the next generation. However, many of the young people aren't interested in becoming farmers - they have aspirations of their own. Thorliff Bjorklund has been writing stories and plays since he was a young boy and longs to attend college to study journalism. But his father has other plans for him and refuses to agree.

Thorliff's dream of becoming a writer is within reach. Working for a newspaper in Northfield, Minnesota, he is busy writing articles and stories to pay his way through college. But his idyllic world comes to a sudden halt when a catastrophe hits the town of Blessing, North Dakota. While waiting to hear if any of her applications to medical schools are accepted, Elizabeth takes a nursing position in Chicago. Then a devastating experience on the hospital ward puts her faith in God and her very life on the line.

As the last will of a close friend is read, three women discover that they have inherited a legacy from her: the funds to take a dream trip to Florence, Italy, in her memory. With plenty of hilarious travel mishaps along the way, this book is a story of deep friendship, of making room in our lives to celebrate and remember, of grief, of the realization that friendship keeps the memory alive, and the sweet discovery of unexpected romance.

Award-winning author Lauraine Snelling delivers her first installment of the Dakotah Treasures series. Ruby, a Crossings Book Club Main Selection, is the story of a young woman who must leave behind the life she has grown accustomed to in order to start a new life in the bleak Dakota Territory.

Keira Johnson, a 50-year-old mother of two grown sons, believes she lives a good Christian life without secrets - until she discovers a life-jarring fact her late mother kept hidden all her life. Kiera was born out of wedlock, and the man she had always known as her father had adopted her as an infant. Meanwhile, Keira's beloved 17-year-old niece, Kirsten, has just discovered an unwanted pregnancy. Her boyfriend, Jose, is bound for college and Kirsten does not know what to do.

Mona and Ken Sorenson are approaching the best years of their lives. Mona's greatest concern is that Ken will learn of the surprise party she's planning for his retirement from his job as dean of students at Stone University. They've already been making plans to travel and spend limitless hours in the garden, and Ken is looking forward to working on his woodworking and fishing with his grandchildren. It's what they deserve after years of careful planning. But things begin to unravel....

The sprawling lake home Lynn Lundberg built with her husband has been an epicenter of joyful family life, from summer holidays spent around the water, to cookies baked in the kitchen with grandchildren in the fall. But since her husband's sudden passing two years ago, Lynn has been lost in the grief and solitude she feels without him at home. She doesn't want to sell the big family place, but she can't exist there on her own much longer.

We are not taught how to grieve, and yet grief comes to every one of us at some time. Bestselling author Lauraine Snelling discovered this truth when she began her own journey with grief in 1985, the year her 20-year-old daughter, Marie, lost her battle with cancer.

In this nonfiction book,A Hand to Hold, Lauraine helps us release the fears that make us uncomfortable around those who grieve. She urges us to offer those who grieve the gifts of touch, tears, talk, and time.

Recognizing how common it is for crafters to start many projects and finish few, a group of women join together to form a guild - Unfinished Projects Anonymous - to keep each other on track and accountable. Three friends are tasked with the job of home visits for their guild. Over the course of the story, this ensemble of women discover that much of life is half-finished - relationships, the raising of children, even our very relationship with the Lord - and that may be perfectly fine.