While the town of Jesse, Minnesota, is purely a figment of my own overactive imagination, there is indeed a fair-sized Amish population in Minnesota's southeastern corner based around the towns of Harmony and Canton. It is in this area that I grew up.

The influx of Amish did not come until the mid-seventies, but they are now a firmly established community and have played a vital role in the area's economic recovery from the agricultural depression of the early eighties by attracting tourists to this very lovely part of the state.

So if you ever have the yearning for rolling countryside and the sound of buggy wheels clattering along the shoulder of the road, for the slower pace of small-town life and a place where everybody knows everybody else by name, I've got just the place for you.


Sarah Troyer sat beside the bed, her eyes wide and unblinking as she stared at the man whose care she had been charged with. He lay motionless, only his head visible above the black-and-purple quilt that covered the bed. He was perhaps thirty-two or thirty-three, but he seemed older in his unconscious state. Even in the amber glow of the bedside lamp, his skin was the color of parchment. His left eye was swollen along the brow and discolored like a peach gone bad. A neat line of stitches embroidered his chin at an angle. In spite of his injuries, his face was strong and handsome, with a high, broad forehead and bold black brows, a stubborn-looking chin and a wide, well-defined mouth that kept drawing her gaze like a magnet.