In the heat of the Civil War, Beth Bumgartner is called into action in a way she never dreamed. Her grandmother has asked her to join her as a nurse helping the wounded even though their very lives may be at risk as well as grandmother's home. Now that the Rebel soldiers have made their way into Harper's Ferry, many in the town have taken what little personal affects they possess and have attempted to make their way to safe places to hide until the war is over and they hope they still have a home standing. Only while her brother Jedediah has left to fight in the war against the North, she has been called to help care for the soldiers who have invaded their town.
It is through her grandmother's persistence that Beth finds the strength and will to at least offer what comfort she can provide, through reading Scriptures, writing last letters or simply praying for them before most slip into their everlasting sleep. She wonders just what effects her efforts will have on men that are doomed to die anyway, and despite defying her parents and at least trying to help, she knows she must stay. She can't leave her grandmother Greta alone.
When a Confederate soldier is brought to the home, she is asked to care for him despite that the odds are against this man. He has saved the lives of three slaves and it is through their pleads that Beth and her grandmother offer to help. Through faithful prayers and continued care, Joe fights his way back to the land of the living and offers a small peak into the war that many don't see. He fights night terrors where he faces losing his brother Ben to a mysterious man who seems bent on killing Ben and leaving Joe in the care of the slaves. He feels there is more to the puzzle that what bits and pieces his mind offers if he can only find those slaves that he helped. They might just provide him the answers he so desperately seeks.
Along the way Beth pieces together a quilt that her mother had sent along as a reminder and a message from home. What that message is will be revealed as Beth pieces it together and finds hope in not only coming to terms with her own disability but being able to see this war through the eyes of God and let the hate she holds inside finally heal. In the end that is the message that truly matters and will resound with readers of A Heartbeat Away by S. Dionne Moore, one of the many novels in the Quilts of Love Series.
I received A Heartbeat Away by S. Dionne Moore compliments of Abingdon Press and Litfuse Publicity Book Tours for my honest review and received no monetary compensation for a favorable one. This novel is part of the Quilts of Love Series written by a variety of authors and this is the first for S. Dionne Moore. This gives the readers an inside look at what life in the South really looked like in the midst of the Battle of Antietam and just how brutal it was from both sides of the war. It is hard to imagine men in our own country turning against each other but that is just one of the effects of a Civil War. The message in this novel is one about hope and finding it in one of the darkest times in our life. It's always there one just has to keep pursuing it in order to find it. I rate this one a 4 out of 5 stars and you can find this at your local retailer. Even though they are part of a series, since each novel deals with something different you can pick up any of them as they are stand alones in a greater series.
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