Hi, I’m Ann H. Gabhart. I love talking about my showboat story, IN THE SHADOW OF THE RIVER and had a great time sharing about my characters and more in this fun Title Challenge Post.   I – Illusion – Illusion is an obvious theme on the showboat as dramas and other acts are presented to the patrons who stream down to the showboat to be entertained. But illusion is also an underlying theme when Jacci Reed realizes that much of what she has believed about her life may be nothing but shifting shadows. N – Night – Each night after the showboat ties up at a landing it is show time for the actors and actresses aboard, but sometimes the night can hold dangers or reveal secrets from the past.   T – Talents – A showboat cast had an array of talents. My characters showcased their acrobatic, singing, dancing, ventriloquism talents, and more. Jacci started doing song and dance numbers with her grandfather when she was five. H – Heart – Gabe has been in love with Jacci forever, but she thinks of him as a brother. He needs to find a way to reveal the true feelings…

Hi, I’m Ann H. Gabhart. So fun to be here to share about my new book WHEN THE MEADOW BLOOMS. Doesn’t that title make you think of how flowers bring new hope each spring? The people in my story need that new hope. This title challenge turned out to be a true challenge, but a fun one as I came up with words to share about my characters and more about my story. So here goes. W – Ways. WHEN THE MEADOW BLOOMS is a story of ways to keep believing when hard things happen. As the story begins, Calla, fourteen, and her sister, Sienna, nine, are in an orphanage while their mother, Rose, is being treated for tuberculosis at a sanatorium. Calla never stops praying for a way for their family to be together again.  H – Home. Is there a word that brings more warm thoughts and memories to mind? When their mother became ill, Calla and Sienna had to go to the Home for Girls, a place that never felt like home at all. Will Meadowland be their dreamed for home? E – Efforts. Every time Sienna gets in trouble at the orphanage, Calla wants to find…

Seemed everybody was talking about Aunt Perdie today. Truth was, plenty of Aunt Perdie stories floated around the mountains. She hadn’t ever married. Said nobody ever came calling to ask her, but if they had, she might just have said no. Leastways once she got past normal marrying age. By then she couldn’t see the purpose in sharing a cabin that wasn’t all that big with some man who’d want her to do things his way. Not when she was happy doing things her way. Would that be how Tansy ended up? An old lady in a lonesome cabin after spurning whatever marriage prospects might have come knocking on her door? Youngsters then might be sharing Aunt Tansy stories. Could be they already were talking about that crazy book woman, even if they were glad to see her coming. The thought made her laugh out loud. At Aunt Perdie’s, Tansy tied Shadrach to a handy tree, then climbed up the steps to bang on the cabin door. Aunt Perdie didn’t have a porch, just a little slab of roof over the top step. She was ready to knock again when the door creaked open. “Well, if it ain’t the book woman….

1–What’s the name of your latest release?  An Appalachian Summer. 2–What is it about?  In 1933, debutante Piper Danson, craving more from life than simply an advantageous marriage, jumps at the opportunity to volunteer with the Frontier Nursing Service in the Appalachian Mountains. Romance and adventure are in the Kentucky mountain air in this story of a woman caught between two worlds—each promising something different. 3–What word best describes your heroine?  Spunky. 4–What makes your hero irresistible?  How much he loves my heroine and that gorgeous smile. 5–Who are the people your main characters turn to when they need help?  My heroine, Piper, could always depend on her aunt Truda to be on her side and understand her desire to do something different. My hero, Jamie, also had a champion in his uncle Wyatt who was a steadying influence when everything was going wrong for Jamie and his family.  6–What do you love about the setting of your book?  I love going to the mountains for a story. Even when times are hard as they were in the 1930’s flowers still bloom. Creeks still sparkle in the sun. People still have babies. So I enjoyed the mountain scenery, the mountain…

“No one comes here by accident.” (Frontier Nursing Service saying) I came across that saying while researching the Frontier Nursing Service for the historical background of my novel, These Healing Hills. In 1925, Mary Breckinridge established a nurse midwife service in the Appalachian Mountains. As I read about the nurse midwives and the volunteers who assisted them in providing prenatal and maternity care along with other health services to the Kentucky mountain community, I could see why the workers felt they weren’t part of the Frontier Nursing Service by accident. Breckinridge recruited the first nurse midwives from England since at the time, America had no midwifery schools, so coming to Kentucky involved great effort and changes in the lives of those who came to the mountains. The volunteer helpers, called couriers, were generally privileged young women from society circles who would come and stay for a few weeks or months to take care of the midwives’ horses, run errands, and make themselves useful in a myriad of ways. It’s easy to imagine the life lessons these young women learned in this mountain community where the residents had few if any modern amenities. Most of the mountain families managed through subsistence…

About Ann H. Gabhart Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of several Shaker novels—The Outsider, The Believer, The Seeker, The Blessed, and The Gifted—as well as Angel Sister, Small Town Girl, Love Comes Home, Words Spoken True, and The Heart of Hollyhill series. She lives with her husband a mile from where she was born in rural Kentucky. Rosey Corner WEBSITE | PINTEREST | TWITTER | FACEBOOK Tell us a little about THESE HEALING HILLS. Francine Howard’s life is turned upside down when the soldier she planned to marry after World War II writes to say he’s fallen in love with a woman in England. She needs a new direction. Already a nurse, she jumps at the chance to train as a midwife in the Frontier Nursing Service in the Appalachian Mountains. The recruiter promised Francine her own horse and dog along with adventure and the chance to serve people in need of health care. Life in the mountains is harder than Francine ever imagined, but at the same time the mountain views buoy her spirit, and the mountain people touch her heart. Ben Locke has spent many years in the army longing to once more breathe the mountain…

I’ve been writing a long time. My first published books were historical romances. Then I wrote books for young teens and middle readers. Now I’m writing historical fiction again but this time for the inspirational market. ANGEL SISTER is my twenty-first published book. Several more of my books are in the publishing pipeline and then, I regret to say, some of my manuscripts are stuck away on my “nobody loved the stories but me” shelf. That’s a lot of story ideas. At times I worry my story well might run dry. Especially when I need a new idea and I’m stumbling around in the dark of my mind just hoping I’ll bump into something to light up my imagination. Sometimes that new idea was right in front of my eyes all the time. A part of my life. That’s what happened with ANGEL SISTER. I’d written some stories with a setting based on my growing up years and had fun with that. So when I started trying to grab hold of a new idea, I recalled all my mother’s stories about growing up during the Great Depression. Wonderful stories of going to school barefoot, roller-skating on the highway, and taffy…