Vannetta Chapman writes inspirational fiction full of grace. She has published more than one hundred articles in Christian family magazines, receiving more than two dozen awards from Romance Writers of America chapter groups. She discovered her love for the Amish while researching her grandfather's birthplace of Albion, Pennsylvania. Her novel Falling to Pieces was a 2012 ACFW Carol Award finalist. A Promise for Miriam earned a spot on the June 2012 Christian Retailing Top Ten Fiction list. Chapman was a teacher for 15 years and currently writes full time. She lives in the Texas hill country with her husband. For more, visit www.VannettaChapman.com.

Vannetta Chapman

Joshua’s Mission: A Novel

Plain and Simple Miracles series
Harvest House Publishers

978-0736956055, paper, 352 pages, $14.99 (ebook also available)

February 2016

In the fictional Amish farming town of Cody’s Creek, Oklahoma, twenty-year-old Becca Troyer ponders whether she’s the kind of woman a good man will ever love, when others her age have married and started families. Sarah Yoder struggles with troubles few suspect exist in the Plain community. Tall, twenty-seven-year-old Joshua Kline works hard to help his father bring in the crops—and to keep his younger bruder in line.

Seven hundred miles away that same autumn, a hurricane is rapidly increasing strength and bearing down on Corpus Christi, Texas. In events frighteningly reminiscent of the destruction and death wrought on the Gulf Coast by real-life hurricanes Celia (1970) and Ike (2008), the barrier island of Port Aransas and its residents—including widower Charlie Everman, his surrogate daughter Alice, and his elderly friend Moose—lie directly in its path. The Category 4 storm is set to collide head-on with the lives and homes of Moose and Charlie, who don’t evacuate in time.

Hurricane Orion will soon bring the Cody’s Creek characters into collision with faraway Port Aransas as well, when the opportunity to participate in a Mennonite Disaster Services program to rebuild lost homes takes Becca and Sarah, and at the last minute the Kline brothers, to assist.

Their first mission away from home throws all four into circumstances of the Englischer world, sites of unimaginable devastation, and tests of their faith. But for Joshua, his mission turns out to be a far more personal one. Will seventeen-year-old Alton shrug off the troubling behaviors of adolescence and incline toward the ways of responsible Joshua and the Amish community? Or will he wind up behind bars—again?

In expanding her Amish-centered fiction to the Lone Star State, Carol award finalist Vannetta Chapman spins a winning tale of grace under pressure, heroism where it’s least looked for, and the lesson that forgiveness trumps judgment. She also invites readers along on a Texas travelogue, weaving in descriptions of Gulf sunsets and surf along with the history of the West Texas Mennonite community of Seminole, and a convincing account of riding out a hurricane and dealing with its aftermath.

It’s as gentle a romance as one would expect—don’t look for the first chaste kiss until two-thirds through—and most of the various Port A characters we meet are unfailingly goodhearted and faithful, their onstage struggles few outside of the shared disaster of the hurricane. But the inner conflicts among the main characters draw readers in, to share in their evolving choices and learn their ways even if (like this reviewer) we are outsiders.

Joshua’s Mission exhibits a handful of those spelling, styling, and editing errors that seem to plague even professionally published books these days—not enough to distress or distract for the most part. Any Texas reader, though, will know it’s Blue Bell (not Bluebell) Ice Cream.

The book’s cover design draws us beautifully into the landscape of the story. Chapman provides back-of-book discussion questions and a helpful glossary.

Ultimately, Joshua’s Mission teaches the power of community during adversity—a gratifying reminder that deepens this account of familial and romantic love.

* * * * *