Book Description
Early retirement never sounded so good to Mervin and Ruthie Miller. After a lifetime in Millersburg, where Mervin worked at a furniture and shed factory and Ruthie helped out at a fabric store, they have exciting plans: They’re going to become “Amish Gentlemen Farmers.” That means buying a 30-acre, ramshackle farm, and all that comes with it—no matter what their grown children, friends, and aching muscles think . . .
Aaron Miller is worried about his parents, but there’s little he can do now that he lives in Kentucky and has a baby on the way. Then his childhood best friend, Kyle Burkholder, makes a heaven-sent offer: he’ll move in with Aaron’s parents to teach them about raising cows and chickens, and even give weekly reports to Aaron.
The arrangement is going well—until Kyle stumbles upon Daisy Lapp who’s just been in a bicycle accident. When he visits her in the hospital, he knows there’s something special between them. So does Daisy. But her something special is the fact that Kyle lives on the farm she’d always dreamed of buying one day. She knows it’s wrong, but she’s jealous. She wants nothing to do with Kyle and politely tells him so.
Still, like the Millers, Kyle’s not one to give up easily. Not on himself, not on the farm, and certainly not on Daisy. With dedication and a leap of faith, the lives they envisioned just might come true.
***
Elise’s Thoughts
D is for Daisy by Shelley Shepard Gray is once again a book that will put a smile on readers’ faces and make them feel good. There has never been a book she has written that is not engrossing, captivating, and heartwarming.
The story takes place in the rural Amish community of Walden, Ohio. Mervin and Ruthie Miller decide to buy a farm instead of working in a furniture factory and fabric store. The problem is neither know anything about farming. Their son’s childhood best friend, Kyle Hostetler, agrees to help them out and moves in as their hired hand.
While working, he sees a girl crash her electric bike resulting in her broken leg. When he comes to visit her in the hospital, she shows her resentment by being rude. Kyle finds out that that he lives on the farm she’d always dreamed of buying one day. Daisy Lapp feels the farm next to her parent’s farm had been sold out from under her. Now she is reassessing her life, realizing she
has no boyfriend and no job. She was fired because she is unable to work due to the accident.
Ruthie acts as a matchmaker, having Kyle deliver baked goods to Daisy as she recuperates. Slowly they become friends and Daisy realizes she is attracted to him. But he likes her arch enemy, Winter Walker, a selfish girl who enjoys putting Daisy down. Can Kyle realize the true nature of Winter and decide to court Daisy instead?
Like all her other books this story will warm readers’ hearts. It has appealing characters that are realistic, including Velvet the cow. It is a feel-good book.
***
Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Is this a new series of sorts or is it a continuation of your ABC series?
Shelley Shepard Gray: When I first thought of doing ABCs, I really did want to do all 26 letters, which would be the dream. I don’t know if that’ll happen. I ended up with a fictional town named Walden in Ohio because I thought, well, I’m just going to have to keep adding things. I came up with the original idea for books, A, B, and C and had that played out. I decided I’m just going to do the different series and trilogies. C ended the first trilogy with the Schrock family. F concludes this trilogy, and I’m contracted for G, with G, H and I, starting a whole a new series. We’ll see, how many letters I end up getting to do. It may just be D through G. Right now, I’ve written 6 of them. I’m contracted for the 7th letter of the alphabet.
EC: Why did you have the setting of the farm?
SSG: A little bit of this series is kind of a tongue in cheek for my husband. He’s a salesman. We’ve lived all over the country. We’ve always lived in the suburbs, but he had a secret dream of living on a farm. This is a little bit of making fun of myself and my husband. Sometimes, maybe achieving your dream is not all a bed of roses, and there is a lot of hard work. Unlike the song, every dream doesn’t always come true the way you hope it will.
EC: Did you ever hear of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone Mystery books that has in the title the alphabet?
SSG: I’ve read a bunch of her books, and my original editor over at Kensington, she’s retired now, but when we were first talking about this, she noted, Shelly, you could be our Amish Sue Grafton. I was like, well, I couldn’t imagine a better role model. It is an ode to her.
EC: How would you describe Daisy?
SSG: She’s a dreamer, but her dreams go up in smoke. She’s a tomboy and feels different than other Amish girls, thinks she’s a misfit. She is frustrated because she feels she needs to re-examine her life and to be useful. Daisy is determined, stubborn, and can be tight lipped, strong, hopeful, modest, somewhat innovative, and insecure. She doesn’t feel tough and independent like others think of her.
EC: Is she a little different than the other female leads you write?
SSG: I love to write a heroine that readers are rooting for. At first, she kind of drove me crazy, because I kept thinking she’s the type of character or person that just kind of wants to yell to everyone: if you just give me a chance, you’re going to like me. I’m worth the struggle to be a friend, because I do know what I’m doing, and I am a hard worker. She’s just begging for people to believe in her, and, but she needs to believe in herself too.
EC: What role does Ruthie and Mervin play in this new series?
SSG: When I first pitched it to my editor, I called it the “Amish Green Acres,” referring to the TV show. So many people seem to think that all Amish are great at sewing. All Amish are great at farming. It was like somebody who thinks, oh, well, when you’re born to an Amish family they just automatically know how to do everything. But I wanted to have an older couple who lived in an Amish city but they always had a dream of having this big farm. They finally get their dream by buying this farm, and they have no idea what they’re doing. That was the inspiration for the books D, E, and F. Different people come into the Miller’s lives to try to help them out in different ways. They are very caring and have a lot of common sense, except when they bought this farm. And there’s always an animal to deal with.
EC: How would you describe Kyle?
SSG: He is a good older brother, protective, friendly, impulsive, and kind.
EC: His sister, Sarah, is hard of hearing?
SSG: She was not based on anyone specific. I was a 6th grade teacher for a long time and I had students with a lot of different learning disabilities in my classrooms. I always tried to make accommodations. Sarah has a caption phone. Her teacher doesn’t really seem to understand how to deal with her. She is teased a lot and because of that is not confident. Kyle is like a lot of older brothers, sisters, parents, who wants to make things right, to fix things. To put Sarah in a bubble, every time things go wrong or things happen, but sometimes it’s out of our control.
EC: What about the relationship between Kyle and Daisy?
SSG: I thought he was a good counterpart for Daisy. He was kind of the opposite of her. She’s a little awkward, a little tomboyish, kind of a wallflower. She just doesn’t quite fit in and never really has. While Kyle on the other side is kind of a catch. People want to be his friend and they look out for him. He’s good at a lot of things. And so, I thought he would be a fun counterpart to her. When they first met, Daisy was kind of rude to him and was confused and irritated by him. He helps her after she gets in this bike accident. Part of the reason she is so difficult with Kyle is she’s just embarrassed. But then they turned into friends because they had reading and farming in common. He believed in her, and thought of her as special and unique. They eventually fell in love with each other.
EC: There is this quote you wrote about a river that very much describes their relationship. Do you agree?
SSG: You are referring to “A river can be shallow or calm, but oftentimes perilous, deep, a strong current”. Daisy, in a sense, felt that her life was filled with disappointments, including at some point her relationship with Kyle because of his infatuation with another Amish girl, Winter. But she is the one who ends up with Kyle and realizes their strengths. She feels successful, she feels good about herself, and feels good about her relationship with Kyle. He always encouraged her to keep trying, to keep looking, and to not give up.
EC: How would you describe Winter?
SSG: I usually don’t like love triangles one bit. I don’t like reading about them. I don’t like writing about them, but for this book, I used it to have Kyle make a mistake. So, he totally gets sucked in by Winter, who is not a nice girl. She was never nice to Daisy. When Kyle found out about that, it just made her in his mind not to be a very nice person. She twists people’s words, is a liar, pretends to be nice, but is aggressive and dramatic. Winter is someone who seeks attention, spoiled, and I would call her a mean Amish girl.
EC: Do you think the names Daisy and Winter really represent the characters well?
SSG: Winter is very cold so I thought it was fitting. She has a cold personality, for sure. And Winter’s almost so stormy, and so was she. Regarding Daisy, I thought of the actual flower, delicate, warm, and sunny.
EC: What role did Velvet the cow play?
SSG: I had Ruthie in the barn doing some farm work. I wanted her to have a safe person, originally, to kind of talk things over with, and then the next thing I know, I wrote a scene in there, and there was the cow, the bovine therapist, a therapy animal. I had written another book for Kensington, titled, Happily Ever Amish, and there was a donkey, and I wrote it in because the heroine didn’t have a lot of friends, and she had to have a way for her to talk to somebody that wasn’t all internal dialogue. I had her talk to this donkey, and it went over well. I think that’s how I came up with, oh, I’ll just have a cow this time. I was able to get out the people’s feelings and thoughts without it being just inside their head. It’s a slow book if it’s just pages and pages of backstory and description.
EC: Next books?
SSG: E is for Englisher. The heroine’s name is Ella, and she’s lost everybody in her family. She is English, her parents had died in a car accident. Ruthie and Mervin turned into her reluctant parents in a way. She goes to their house to kind of be a caretaker, but really, they are taking care of her. It comes out in November, and it’s a Christmas book.
Another series I am writing, the first book in the “Amish Widow’s Club Series,” The Unexpected Caller comes out July 7th. And then the second book in the Widows Club, The Forbidden Caller comes out in September. The premise for this series is a secret Amish widow’s club in Holmes County. Widowed women after a year or so are offered an invitation to join this club. It’s like a support group. They meet, they get together once a month or every couple of weeks and do stuff together. It’s for women who don’t want to get married again. But of course, my heroines get married again.
THANK YOU!!
***
BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
