Shattered Peace
Woodworking Lessons
July 6, 2016
Jason’s Gift
June 22, 2019
Shattered Peace
P eace Ridge Village is a small town in rural Minnesota where people look out for one another. A town where "everybody knows your name." But a smooth-talking real estate agent visits the village with plans for transforming Peace Ridge into a tourist destination and in the process, long-buried secrets and hurts are revealed.
Why Pastor Ed's wife and children do not serve with him at Valley Community Church? The secrets that Eva Butler, the town's prize-winning gardener, is hiding? The buried hurts in Bill and Donna's marriage? Jennie, the farmer's wife, and her hidden longing?
It all comes together at the Crossroads Convenience Store where Romyn listens with a Christ-centered heart. Marilyn Hayes Phillips is the author of "A Wild Olive Shoot," her own personal spiritual memoir. "Shattered Peace" is Book 1 in the Peace Ridge Village Series. Book 2 is "Jason's Gift." She is also the author of a family history and cookbook called "How About a Little Lunch?" She lives in rural Minnesota with her husband, Lem.
„Is this why I went to college? How does a degree in English history, which showed me an incredible fascinating world beyond this bitty town of Peace Ridge Village, help me be a better farm wife? ”
Book One Excerpt
B ending over the open oven door with its whoosh of hot air, Jennie took out the two lemon pies and set them on the counter along with the others. She looked at the pillowy golden meringue with a critical eye. Perfect. Her faded forest-green linoleum countertop resembled a grandma’s pieced quilt top, pinwheeled with patterns of apple pies, blueberry, pumpkin with gingery crust, praline cheesecake pie, and an assortment of cream custard pies, her buttercup yellow banana cream shouting, “Look at me!” with tropical insouciance.
She straightened and rolled her shoulders and then slowly stretched her back to relieve its tension and soreness. Her kitchen smelled good enough to eat; an intoxicating, buttery-lemon-vanilla-apple scent lingered lightly in the air. Way better than Febreze. Up since 3:30 a.m., she had her 15 pies made—5 of her trademark apple with cinnamon streusel along with the other favorites—pie crust completed just in time to avoid the oppressive humidity on its way.
That should be enough for the weekend customers at the Crossroads convenience store, she thought to herself. And just enough time for a brief cup of coffee before she had to make her pie run. She walked out onto the porch and drank in the fresh new day. The morning July sun was slowly melting the sloping backyard’s mossy nighttime dark to fresh lime green tinged with sparkles of dew. Her old dog, Thunder, had his nose to the ground tracking a nighttime scent and was totally oblivious to her soft greeting. The sweet matins of robins and grosbeaks broke the quietness of dawn as they did every morning. Her vanilla coffee blend was a sweet scent offering to the morning air. Without a doubt her favorite time of the day. “Thank you, God,” she whispered to the morning.
