The Song of Sourwood Mountain

by Ann H. Gabhart

Overview

The doors she thought were closed forever are starting to open up . . . just a crack

Though the century began with such promise, it is 1910 when Mira Dean's hopes of being a wife and mother are dashed to pieces. Her fiancé dead from tuberculosis, Mira resigns herself to being a spinster schoolteacher—until Gordon Covington shows up.

No longer the boy she knew from school, Gordon is now a preacher who is full of surprises. First, he asks Mira to come to Sourwood in Eastern Kentucky to teach at his mission school. Second, he asks her to marry him. Just like that.

With much trepidation, Mira steps out in faith into a life she never imagined, in a place filled with its own special challenges, to serve a people who just might end up becoming the family she always yearned for.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780800741730
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	156,921
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of many novels, including In the Shadow of the River, When the Meadow Blooms, Along a Storied Trail, An Appalachian Summer, River to Redemption, These Healing Hills, and Angel Sister. She and her husband live on a farm a mile from where she was born in rural Kentucky. Ann enjoys discovering the everyday wonders of nature while hiking in her farm's fields and woods with her grandchildren and her dogs, Frankie and Marley. Learn more at AnnHGabhart.com.

Editorial Reviews

03/11/2024

The Appalachian mountains provide an atmospheric backdrop for this textured early 20th-century historical romance from Gabhart (In the Shadow of the River). Mira Dean’s childhood sweetheart died of tuberculosis five years before the start of the novel, taking with him her dreams of motherhood. Since then, she’s accepted a bland though comfortable life as a schoolteacher in Louisville, Ky. When missionary Gordon Covington, a former classmate of Mira’s, asks her to marry him and teach the children of the small Appalachian community of Sourwood, she rejects the offer—but changes her mind a few weeks later, after she loses her job and apartment in quick succession. The two marry and Mira soon becomes enamored with her new students, especially 10-year-old orphan Ada June. As Mira’s desire to be a mother resurfaces, she questions whether she’ll be able to have children, and whether her marriage of convenience will ever transform into one of real love. Gabhart sensitively portrays both the challenges of mountain life—poverty, harsh weather, disease—and the heart and warmth of this hardscrabble community. The slow-burn romance between Mira and Gordon adds just the right amount of sweetness. Gabhart’s fans will swoon. (May)

Publishers Weekly

05/01/2024

Mira Dean isn't expecting a marriage proposal on an ordinary Sunday, but the missionary speaker at church insists that God is calling her to be his wife—and the teacher at his remote Appalachian mission school. Content in her life as a spinster teacher ever since the death of her fiancé, Mira turns Gordon Covington down. But then she loses both her job and her place to live over the next few days, so she decides to take a chance on Sourwood, KY, and Gordon. In 1910, there are no roads into Sourwood, no electricity or running water, and not much welcome for outsiders. But Mira finds purpose in caring for an orphan girl and a widow, even as she has to take on school bullies and their parents. As Mira and Gordon try to win over Sourwood, their marriage of convenience grows into something more. VERDICT Readers interested in the hardscrabble mountain life, as depicted in Michelle Shocklee's Appalachian Song and Lynn Austin's Wonderland Creek, will want to add the latest from Gabhart (In the Shadow of the River) to their TBR lists.

Library Journal