The Wind Harp Read online

  What readers and reviewers say about

  A Distant Music

  Book 1 in BJ Hoff’s The Mountain Song Legacy.

  “For this Kentucky woman, reading A Distant Music was like driving through the eastern hills and hollers on a perfect autumn day, with the scent of wood smoke in the air and the trees ablaze with color. BJ Hoff’s lyrical prose brings to life this gentle, moving story of a beloved teacher and his students, who learn far more than the three Rs. I brushed away tears at several tender points in the story and held my breath when it seemed all might be lost. Yet even in the darkest moments, hope shines on every page. A lovely novel by one of historical fiction’s finest wordsmiths.”

  —Liz Curtis Higgs, bestselling author of Thorn in My Heart

  “In the lyrical pages of BJ Hoff’s A Distant Music, we discover that God is present even in the darkness of despair….And where God is, hope overflows. A warm and satisfying tale of characters who will live in your memory for years to come.”

  —Angela Hunt, author of The Novelist

  “As always when I open BJ’s books I am drawn into a place that is both distant and at home. The metaphor of music, of lost music especially, so resonates with those of us who at times feel our voices are lost and long to know that we will be found. I know I’ll love this series as I love her others and secretly, as I tell my husband, I wish I could create the kinds of characters BJ does because I fall in love with them and want them always as my friends.”

  —Jane Kirkpatrick, author of Look for a Clearing in the Wild

  “I read The Penny Whistle years ago and never forgot it. I was delighted to see that it had become a full-length novel. A Distant Music contains all the elements—compelling characters, fascinating setting, and stellar writing—that I’ve come to expect from a book with BJ Hoff’s name on the cover.”

  —Deborah Raney, author of Over the Waters and A Vow to Cherish

  “BJ Hoff is a master storyteller. With impeccable research, vibrant characters, and historical accuracy, Ms. Hoff weaves a story that’s impossible to put down.”

  —Lori Copeland, author of The Plainsman

  “How do I begin to describe a book that touched me in the deepest parts of my heart? I laughed. I cried. I despaired. I regained hope. A Distant Music inspires me to live life well no matter what my circumstances….In A Distant Music, miracles do happen but in unexpected ways.”

  —Armchair Interviews

  “A Distant Music is another captivating book by author BJ Hoff. Ms. Hoff has the ability to create such believable characters that you feel like you know them as friends when you close the book’s final page.…A Distant Music holds such wonderful prose and such realistic descriptions that I felt I was there.”

  —Jill Eileen Smith, reader

  “Picking up a BJ Hoff novel guarantees that you will be transported into another time filled with captivating characters. Book #1 of the new Mountain Song Legacy series, A Distant Music, is no exception. BJ Hoff’s gift of bringing characters to life shines in A Distant Music. I found myself drawn into Maggie MacAuley’s troubles and shed more than a tear or two with her. A Distant Music is an enchanting read that touches the heart. Once more BJ proves that when it comes to the historical voice, she is the master.”

  —Vennessa Ng, book reviewer

  “BJ Hoff’s latest novel, A Distant Music, plays on for me like a haunting melody, even a week after I’ve finished it. The characters are still very much alive in my mind. This is the first book I read of hers, but I definitely plan to read her others, especially the ones in the Mountain Song Legacy series. Her ability to weave spiritual truths into a great story will keep me coming back for more.”

  —Lynetta Smith, reader

  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

  EUGENE, OREGON

  Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  Verses marked NEB are taken from The New English Bible, copyright © Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press 1961, 1970. All rights reserved.

  Cover by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota

  BJ Hoff: Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370, www.booksandsuch.biz.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  THE WIND HARP

  Copyright © 2006 by BJ Hoff

  Published by Harvest House Publishers

  Eugene, Oregon 97402

  www.harvesthousepublishers.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hoff, B. J.

  The wind harp / B.J. Hoff.

  p. cm.— (The mountain song legacy ; bk. 2)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7369-1458-1 (pbk.)

  ISBN-10: 0-7369-1458-7 (pbk.)

  1. Family—Fiction. 2. Coal mines and mining—Fiction. 3. Kentucky—Fiction. 4. Domestic—Fiction.

  I. Title II. Series: Hoff, B. J., Mountain song legacy; bk.2.

  PS3558.O34395W55 2006

  813'.54—dc22

  2006009752

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

  06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 / BC-SK / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Endorsements

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue: A Decision Made

  Chapter One: A Sunday Surprise

  Chapter Two: Autumn Afternoon

  Chapter Three: A Buggy Ride with Mr. Stuart

  Chapter Four: Prayer Is No Small Thing

  Chapter Five: When the Night Is Long and the Questions Are Many

  Chapter Six: From Girl to Woman

  Chapter Seven: Uneasy Thoughts

  Chapter Eight: Friday Night in Skingle Creek

  Chapter Nine: The Beginning of Something New

  Chapter Ten: Night of Secrets

  Chapter Eleven: A Sister’s Tears

  Chapter Twelve: Confrontation

  Chapter Thirteen: To Look Past This Night

  Chapter Fourteen: A Silent Suffering

  Chapter Fifteen: The Pain of Caring

  Chapter Sixteen: A Knock on the Door

  Chapter Seventeen: Larger Than Life

  Chapter Eighteen: Meeting Dr. Gordon

  Chapter Nineteen: Mounting an Offense

  Chapter Twenty: A Painful Encounter

  Chapter Twenty-One: Figaro

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Figaro Goes to School

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Through a Sister’s Eyes

  Chapter Twenty-Four: For the Love of Maggie

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Wind Harp

  Chapter Twenty-Six: When Love Finally Speaks

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Different World

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: A Visit from Dr. Gordon

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Secret Revealed

  Chapter Thirty: Truth in the Shadows

  Chapter Thirty-One: Light Out of Darkness

  Chapter Thirty-Two: In Search of a Blessing

  Epilogue: A Night to Remember

  About the Author

  More Inspirational Fiction from Harvest House Publishers

  For “the men in my life—”<
br />
  Jim…

  A husband who sets the standard for all others…

  Dennis and Eric…

  More sons than sons-in-law…

  Noah, Gunnar, and Caleb…

  Who give me the right to brag.

  You’re growing up so quickly!

  May you also grow in God’s grace.

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to special folks…

  Nick Harrison, whose many gifts go far beyond the editorial, and whose steady faith is an inspiration for all those who are fortunate enough to work with him.

  The Harvest House “family”—So fully committed to their authors, their readers, and especially to their God. What a blessing it is to work with you.

  Janet Kobobel Grant, my agent, my friend…and the one who knows just when and how to apply that extra little push to keep me going.

  My readers—You and Christ in you…the reason why I do it.

  My family—May God bless you all for putting up with me…especially during the “deadline days.”

  Prologue

  A Decision Made

  Home is where there’s one to love,

  Home is where there’s one to love us!

  Charles Swain

  Skingle Creek, Northeastern Kentucky

  August 1904

  The time had come for Maggie MacAuley to make a decision. She had used up most of the extended leave that Miss Addams had reluctantly granted her. There was no more time for delaying the inevitable. She had to decide, and she had to decide now.

  For most of her childhood friends—the ones who had remained in Skingle Creek—there would have been no decision to make. After all, she was a woman grown: twenty-four years old with a hard-earned college degree, a teacher’s certificate, and a respectable position at Hull House. To others, a choice between returning to the bustling city of Chicago and the opportunity to work with Miss Jane Addams, or staying here, in the tiny coal town of her birth, would be no choice at all.

  And yet lying here in the bed that had been hers when she was growing up, in the same bedroom she had once shared with her two sisters, Maggie felt an unexpected tug at her heart at the very thought of leaving again.

  She sat up and began to loosen with both hands her heavy braid of hair, pausing at the sound of raised voices coming from the kitchen. Da and Ray were at it again.

  With a sigh, she went on undoing her braid. By now she had become used to these almost-daily arguments between her father and her brother, but her stomach still tightened when she was forced to listen.

  Today was Sunday, so the two had time to square off in the kitchen before church. During the week, what with Da leaving for the mine before daybreak, they didn’t see each other until evening, so they usually waited until after supper to pitch their battles.

  No matter what time of day they went at it, they were loud, increasingly hostile, and a constant distress to Maggie’s mother.

  As for Maggie, she hated arguments of any kind, but especially between members of her own family. One thing was certain: Her brother, Ray, was cut from a different bolt than she and her two sisters. Not one of them would have dared to argue with their father when they were Ray’s age.

  The truth was that not one of them, women grown though they were, would dare to argue with Da today. Matthew MacAuley was simply not a man to suffer backtalk from his children, no matter if they were now adults.

  Maggie slipped out of bed and padded in her bare feet to the window. It was open, but not the slightest breeze stirred the curtains. The air was already muggy and thick, heavy with the acrid smell of coal dust. Trying to ignore the quarrel in the kitchen, she drew the curtain enough to look out on the narrow side yard, faded to a dull brown from lack of rain and the heat wave that had held steady for nearly three weeks.

  A clothesline sagged from the side of the house to a limb on the gnarled old maple tree across the lot. A shovel leaned against the wall of the cellar near two overturned coal buckets, both empty. From here she couldn’t see Dredd’s Mountain, where the mine dug into the hillside, but she was aware of its hovering presence all the same.

  The coal company still owned the town, and the mine still spilled its ash and dust over the entirety of Skingle Creek, painting it a relentless gray. The house next door, which Tom Quigley religiously painted white every five years, wore the same smoky coat as her parents’ home and every other house in town.

  Her sisters, especially Eva Grace, the older, hated Skingle Creek. Even as children, she and Nell Frances had spent many a night whispering from one bed to the other about the day when they’d be old enough to escape. And they had both followed their dreams. Eva Grace now lived in Lexington with her husband, while Nell Frances, also married and with two little girls, had moved even farther away, to a farm in Indiana. Only Ray, the youngest of the four, remained at home, and no doubt he was already planning his own flight.

  Maggie’s feelings about Skingle Creek had never been as bitter or as sharply defined as those of her siblings or many of her now-relocated schoolmates. She too disliked the drabness, the oppressive veil of dust and grime that colored the town, where boredom bred mischief or worse trouble among the young people, and where heavy spirits were all too prevalent among the parents.

  But Skingle Creek was home, and in a way she couldn’t begin to understand, she had never lost her sense of belonging to this place. Her roots seemed to have grown deeper and stronger than those of her sisters, and although she’d eventually gone away, she had never quite shaken free of the town’s hold on her. Skingle Creek was a part of her, and no matter how long she stayed away, she never felt a total separation from her hometown.

  Where her sisters saw hopelessness and an intolerable monotony of days, Maggie had always sensed the heart of the town and believed in the goodness of its people and in a way of life that, hard as it was, was meant to be valued and preserved.

  She jumped as a sudden shout bounced off the walls of the kitchen. Then the door slammed and silence fell.

  With a sigh, she turned away from the window and went to make her bed. She found these continuing disputes between her father and brother exhausting. The irony in the situation was that the dissension between them had been generated almost entirely by Ray’s resolve to help ease the family’s financial burdens—and Da’s equally fierce determination to prevent him from doing so.

  Though Maggie loved them both and hated this rancor between them, she could see both sides and thought she understood each. She, like her da, did not want to see Ray working in the mines. But at fourteen, her brother was already close to their father in height and on his way to being just as thick-muscled and sturdy. Most likely Ray felt it only right that he take his place in the mine to supplement Da’s wages. To their father, however, Ray was still a boy who needed all the education he could get so he wouldn’t be dependent on the mine for a living.

  According to her mother, ever since the cave-in last year when Da suffered a broken back and a shattered knee, he’d been living with constant pain, which had slowed him down considerably. While Ray admitted that he didn’t want to give up his education, it seemed to trouble him even more to see their father, given his condition, carrying the full weight of supporting the family.

  From all appearances, the conflict was a draw. An encounter between two equally stubborn males whose intentions were the best—but whose emotions were highly inflammatory.

  Maggie had tried talking privately with each of them with no visible results. And when she discussed the situation with her mother, she knew for a certainty that it was wearing her down, too. Last night, after one of the hottest bouts of quarreling so far, she had heard her mother quietly weeping in the bedroom.

  Long after silence settled over the house, Maggie searched her thoughts for something—anything—she might do to help ease the problem. Although an idea had been lurking at the edge of her mind for several days now, last night it appeared in full force, giving her quite a jolt.

/>   She had wrestled with her emotions and prayed for guidance most of the night. Small wonder she felt so dull and weary this morning. But she finally knew what she had to do, as unsettling as it might be. There was no way of knowing what it would accomplish, if anything, but in the bright light of morning she realized her decision had been made.

  She plopped down on the side of the bed, sitting very still, the knot in her throat tightening even more. She would write to Miss Addams this morning and tender her resignation.

  Maggie was aware that she might give up her position at Hull House only to eventually find that it had been in vain, that she had made no difference after all in what admittedly seemed to be an unresolvable conflict between her father and brother. Any sign of change would almost certainly be slow in coming. But she simply could not leave her family. Not now. If for no other reason than to be here for her mother, she had to stay.

  Besides, if she were to be brutally honest with herself, the hostility between her father and brother wasn’t the only reason she was staying in Skingle Creek.

  But that was another concern, one she wasn’t ready just yet… perhaps would never be ready…to confront.

  Chapter One

  A Sunday Surprise

  Write his merits on your mind;

  Morals pure and manners kind;

  In his head, as on a hill,

  Virtue placed her citadel.

  William Drennan

  September

  Maggie had almost forgotten how a big family dinner could wreck a kitchen. Even though they were a small family these days—only four of them—it seemed as though every pot and pan and most of the tableware had been used. She glanced around from the sink, relieved to see they finally had things under control. The table was cleared, the linens shaken, the dishes dried and put away. All that remained was to scour the stove and clean the sink.

  She tugged the sleeves of her shirtwaist up a bit higher, though they were already soaked, and swiped a hand over her forehead to blot the perspiration. The day was hot for September; the kitchen so steamy it was nearly intolerable. Most of yesterday had been spent in the same sweltering heat, helping her mother can tomatoes and corn. At the moment all she could think of was a cool bath, the quiet of her bedroom, and the book about Miss Helen Keller that she’d brought with her from Chicago. She was definitely ready for a rest—and some peace and quiet.