Naomi’s Christmas (37 page)

Snickerdoodles

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Cream the butter or margarine and sugar together. Add the
egg and beat until fluffy. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder,
baking soda, nutmeg, and salt. Blend dry ingredients into creamed mixture to make
dough. Add more flour if needed to make the dough stiff enough to form balls.

Mix the remaining sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl. Shape the dough into
balls the size of unshelled walnuts. Roll cookie balls in the cinnamon sugar. Place
on greased cookie sheet and flatten with a fork. Bake for 10–12 minutes or until very
lightly browned. Remove to cooling rack, cool, and enjoy! This recipe makes about
three dozen cookies, depending on their size.

Preheat oven to 300°F.

Cream the butter or margarine and sugar together. Add the rest of the ingredients,
except the powdered sugar, and mix well. Shape into balls about the size of unshelled
walnuts. Bake on an ungreased baking sheet for 18–20 minutes. Remove to a rack and
cool slightly, then roll in powdered sugar. This recipe makes about four dozen small
cookies.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Cream the shortening and sugar together. Add the egg; beat. Add the other ingredients
and mix well. Gather together a generous handful of the dough, and roll it out on
a well-floured board until it is about
¹
/
₈
-inch thick. Use cookie cutters to cut the dough into different shapes and arrange
the cookies on an ungreased baking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Bake
the cookies for 5–6 minutes. Remove to racks to cool.

Beat the butter or margarine and vanilla together. Incorporate the powdered sugar
in small increments, adding dribbles of milk as you go until the mixture reaches spreading
consistency. Beat well. Add drops of food coloring to the entire batch, or to small
batches, as desired.

Frost the cookies with the icing and allow the icing to dry for several hours before
attempting to stack the cookies or place them in a container. This recipe makes about
five dozen cookies, depending upon the size of the cookie cutters.

Dear Reader,

I hope you’ve enjoyed another visit with the people of Pleasant Valley. Although the
place doesn’t actually exist, it seems very real to me, as it is based on the Amish
settlements here in my area of north-central Pennsylvania.

It gave me so much pleasure to write about an Amish Christmas in Pennsylvania. Because
of the strong Pennsylvania Dutch heritage here, Amish customs are a bit different
than they are in some other parts of the country, with a little more emphasis on decorations,
although always those that draw attention to the meaning of the season.

Naomi is one of my favorite characters—a quiet, self-effacing woman who nevertheless
has a deep well of spiritual strength. I’m sure we’ve all known women like Naomi,
and I’ve developed a special appreciation for those who have such gentleness coupled
with such fierce determination to do what is right.

I would love to hear your thoughts on my book. If you’d care to write to me, I’d be
happy to reply with a signed bookmark or bookplate and my brochure of Pennsylvania
Dutch recipes. You can find me on the Web at www.martaperry.com, e-mail me at [email protected],
or write to me in care of Berkley Publicity Department, Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

Blessings,

Marta Perry

An Excerpt from

L
YDIA’S
H
OPE

The Lost Sis ters: Pleasant Valley

BOOK EIGHT

by Marta Perry

Coming in June 2013
from Berkley Books

Years ago, a buggy accident left three Amish sisters orphans. Each was sent to a different
family to be raised, and they grew up knowing nothing about one another. When the
eldest, Lydia, learns the truth, she sets out to find the sisters who were lost to
her so long ago.

L
ydia
Beachy continued to tuck the log cabin quilt over her great-aunt, hands moving gently
but automatically as she struggled to make sense of what the elderly woman had just
said. Great-Aunt Sara’s mind must be wandering, for sure, she thought.

I still remember your mammi playing with you and your two little sisters in the apple
orchard.

The apple orchard part made sense. The orchard was still there, still producing apples
for Lydia and her husband and little boys. But she didn’t have any sisters.

“You must be thinking of someone else, Aunt Sara.” She patted her, just as she’d have
patted Daniel or David when they lay down for a nap. “Rest now. A nap every afternoon,
that’s what the doctor said, ain’t so?”

Aunt Sara flapped her hand as if to chase away the doctor’s words. “I’ll just close
my eyes for a minute or two. You and your sisters, ja, and the apple trees with blossoms
like clouds.
Three sweet girls Diane had, that’s certain-sure.” She smiled, veined lids drooping
over her china blue eyes, and in an instant her even breathing told Lydia that she
was asleep.

Sharp as a tack, she is.
Mamm’s voice seemed to echo in Lydia’s ears. She and Daad had brought Great-Aunt
Sara to stay with them after she’d been hospitalized with pneumonia, even though she
continued to insist that she’d be fine in her own little place.

Stubborn, that was her great-aunt. Always wanting to be the one who helped out, not
the one who received help.

Great-Aunt Sara had another role as well…that of family historian. She was the one
who could tell the kinder family stories going back generations and never miss a name
or a date.

Lydia’s forehead furrowed as she slipped quietly across the wide wooden floorboards
of the house where she had grown up. Her great-aunt was confused, surely. Illness
and age could do that to the brightest mind.

But she’d said
Diane
. Lydia’s birth mother was Diane; she’d always known the name. Diane had been married
to Daad’s brother, and Daad and Mamm had adopted Lydia when they’d both died in an
accident.

Her birth parents had always been misty figures in her mind, like a pair of Amish
dolls with features she couldn’t see. Young and happy one minute and gone the next
in the accident Lydia didn’t remember, even though she’d been five at the time.

When she’d fretted at not remembering, Mamm had always soothed the worry away.
It is God’s way of making it easier for you,
Mamm would say.
The accident was a terrible thing, and better for you not to remember.

Her thoughts kept her company as she descended the bare, narrow stairs of the old
farmhouse. She turned left at the bottom as she always did, her steps taking her into
the kitchen, the heart of the home.

The square farmhouse kitchen was as spotless as it always had been, the long table
maybe a bit empty-looking now that all of them were grown and mostly out of the house.
April sunshine streamed through the window, laying a path across the linoleum, faded
from so many scrubbings. Mamm always had a calendar on the wall over the table for
decoration as well as for use, and this year’s had pictures of frolicking kittens.
A few violets had been tucked into a water glass on the windowsill, a reminder of
spring.

Mamm bent over the oven door of the gas range, pulling out a cookie sheet, the aroma
of snickerdoodles mixing with that of the chicken that was stewing in the Dutch oven
on top of the stove. Mamm looked up, cheeks red from the warmth of the oven, and slid
the tray onto a cooling rack.

“Cookies for you to take Daniel and David,” she said, probably needlessly. Lydia’s
sons, Daniel and David, would be dumbfounded if she came home from their grossmammi’s
house without some treat for them. It was a thing that never happened.

“Denke, Mamm. That will be their snack after school.” She hesitated, her great-aunt’s
words going round and round in her mind.

Mamm glanced at her, face questioning, and closed the oven door. She dropped a pot
holder on the counter. “Was ist letz? Is something wrong with Aunt Sara?” She took
a step toward the stairs, as if ready to fly up and deal with any emergency.

“No, no, she’s fine. She’s sleeping already.”

“Ach, that’s gut. Rest is what she needs most now.” Mamm reached for the coffeepot.
“Do you have time for a cup before the boys get home from school?”

Words seemed to press against Lydia’s lips, demanding to be let out. “Aunt Sara said
something I didn’t understand.”

“Ja? Was she fretting about the hospital bill again?” Mamm’s brown eyes, magnified
by her glasses, showed concern. Hospital bills were nothing to take lightly when,
like the Amish, a person didn’t have insurance. Still, the church would provide.

“It wasn’t that.” Lydia’s throat was suddenly tight.
Just say it,
she scolded herself. She’d always been able to take any problem to Mamm, and Mamm
always had an answer.

“Aunt Sara was talking about my mother. My birth mother, I mean. Diane.”

“Ja?” The word sounded casual, but the lines around her mother’s eyes seemed to deepen,
and she set the coffeepot down with a clatter, not even seeming to notice it was on
the countertop and not the stove.

“She was…She must have been confused.” The kitchen was quiet—so quiet it seemed to
be waiting for something. “She said that Diane had three kinder. Three little girls.
I thought certain-sure she…”

The words trickled off to silence. She couldn’t say again that Aunt Sara was confused.
Not when she could read the truth in Mamm’s face.

“It’s true?” The question came out in a whisper, because something that might have
been grief or panic had a hard grip on her throat. “It is true.”

Mamm’s face seemed to crumple like a blossom torn from a branch. “Lydia, I’m sorry.”

“But…” The familiar kitchen was suddenly as strange as if she’d never seen it before.
She grasped the top of the closest ladder-back chair. “I had sisters? Two little sisters?”

Mamm nodded, her eyes shining with tears. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You didn’t
remember, and so we thought it best not to say anything. We didn’t want you to be
hurt any more than you already were.”

Hurt.
Lydia grasped the word. She’d been hurt in the accident that killed her parents.
She knew that. She’d always known it. Her earliest memories were of the hospital…blurry
images of Mamm and Daad always there, each time she woke up.