Follow the Wind Home is about a 19th Century woman who loves too much. Because she’s so loyal to people and to her home, she’s unable to move forward when she loses them. The novel’s core message addresses a question that the bereaved have been asking themselves since the beginning of time: How do I move on, both emotionally and physically, while still honoring those I must leave behind? The novel begins on a wintry day in 1860 when Catherine Corlis and Mary Todd Lincoln cross paths in a Springfield, Illinois cemetery while visiting their children’s graves. Catherine, shunned by the townspeople after a brothel owner stole her innocence, and Mary, whose husband is running for president, bond over their deep-rooted grief. Mary invites Catherine to call on her. Before she can answer Mary’s invitation, Catherine must find the strength to break the chains of grief that hold her captive to the past. As war descends on the nation, she inherits her uncle’s sheep farm one mile from a Union recruiting camp. While signing the land deed, she meets a charming orphan, sixteen-year-old Belle Peters, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Catherine’s deceased child. That night, Belle’s teacher, Sister Ann, appears at Catherine’s farmhouse and asks Catherine to board Belle, who will soon be graduating from the Ursuline Academy. Catherine latches onto Belle as a replacement for her own daughter. Encouraged that God has given her a second chance, Catherine opens a rehabilitation school for ex-prostitutes at her farmhouse, where Sister Ann and Belle join her as teachers. Catherine writes to Mary Lincoln, sharing her newfound joy. When brothel owners, Hunter and Lucinda Proacher threaten her, and when former school friend, Fred Winterford, exhibits questionable interest in Belle, Catherine fears she will lose Belle. Additional problems plague her: the loss of her farmhands, a prairie fire, a tornado, and smallpox. When death comes knocking, Catherine struggles to hold onto her school, Belle, and her faith. The novel is written in the lyrical, literary fiction style of Willa Cather and John Steinbeck. It is an epic story of love and loss, and of how to find the faith to embrace change and time.
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