On Sparrow Hill
Authors: Maureen Lang
Tags: #Fiction, #Christian, #General, #FICTION / Christian / General, #FICTION / General
“A tender account of unconditional love and the deeper joy that results from overcoming the odds, Lang’s latest is recommended for all collections.”
Library Journal
“Lang has written a novel that’s close to her heart, in which a mother’s love for her child knows no boundaries. This book is heart-wrenching but heart-warming at the same time.”
Romantic Times BOOKreviews,
4-star review
“Beautifully touching and completely absorbing, this bittersweet novel will entertain and educate.”
Compulsivereader.com
“Maureen Lang’s novel
The Oak Leaves
is a work both masterful and deeply touching. weaving together modern medicine and Irish history,
The Oak Leaves
is a lush and moving tapestry of love, fear, and faith.”
Christianbookpreviews.com
“Drawing from her own life experience, Maureen Lang invites us to experience the honest disappointments and glorious discoveries that come from mothering a son others may see as ‘different,’ yet God sees only as His beloved child.”
Liz Curtis Higgs, best-selling author of
Thorn in My Heart
“I couldn’t put this book down. Vivid, compelling and deeply moving, with issues that touch the soul,
The Oak Leaves
was a story that lingered in my heart, and made me ask, just how much am I willing to accept from the Lord? . . . Every moment you spend with this book is worth it.”
Susan May Warren, award-winning author of
Reclaiming Nick
“Maureen Lang’s
The Oak Leaves
is a beautiful, beautiful story of the many kinds of love and their divine author. I feel privileged to be one of the first to read it.”
Lyn Cote, author of
The Women of Ivy Manor
“This is a wonderful story—told from a wealth of experience and from the heart—of the anxiety, despair, mourning, and eventual acceptance associated with having a child diagnosed with fragile X syndrome. . . . This book offers hope and comfort, as well as a celebration of the little joys . . . of raising a child with fragile X.”
Elizabeth Berry-Kravis MD, PhD, Director of the Fragile X Clinic and Research Program, Rush University Medical Center
“Readers who have children with disabilities, readers who know families affected by disabilities, and readers who are simply drawn to a rich, well-written story will be lifted up by this beautiful work.”
Gail Harris-Schmidt, PhD, coauthor of
The Source for Fragile X Syndrome
“Maureen Lang has made the world a better place, and families impacted by fragile X syndrome, now and in the future, owe her their thanks.”
Robert Miller, Executive Director, National Fragile X Foundation
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On Sparrow Hill
Copyright © 2008 by Maureen Lang. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph of woman copyright © by A. Inden/zefa/Corbis. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph of mansion copyright © by Michael Boys/Corbis. All rights reserved.
Author photo copyright © 2005 by Jennifer Girard. All rights reserved.
Designed by Beth Sparkman
Edited by Kathryn S. Olson
Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group, Ltd.,
10152 S. Knoll Circle, Highlands Ranch, CO 80130.
Scripture quotations are taken from the
Holy Bible,
King James Version.
Scripture quotations are taken from the
Holy Bible,
New International Version
®
. NIV
®
. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lang, Maureen.
On sparrow hill / Maureen Lang.
p. cm.
Sequel to: The oak leaves.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4143-1346-7 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-4143-1346-2 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3612.A554O6 2008
813'.6--dc22 2007030031
Dedicated with gratitude to teachers and therapists who work with special-needs kids. You embody true servanthood.
Nature has some perfections to show that she is the image of God, and some defects to show that she is only His image.
Blaise Pascal
* * *
Acknowledgments
This book would not have happened except for my agent, Greg Johnson. I am deeply grateful you didn’t listen to my first ambivalent reaction to the idea of a sequel to
The Oak Leaves
. I would have missed a huge blessing!
I would also like to thank Jim Powell, commercial manager to Holdenby House near Northampton, England. Without your help, my Rebecca would have had little to do on her day job. I am sincerely grateful you didn’t mind my frequent, question-riddled e-mails. Thank you!
Also thanks to Christine Nelson, my English friend and encourager who helped me step out of my American way of thinking and into the skin of my very British characters.
As always, I’m grateful to those who are sharing this journey with me, for their encouragement and inspiration. A special thanks to Sherri Gallagher for her friendship and help.
I cannot end this without another thank-you to Stephanie Broene, Karen Watson, and of course Kathy Olson at Tyndale. Your support and enthusiasm add to the joy of writing, but your professionalism and insight allow this work to exceed my abilities.
Prologue
My dear Berrie’s life can be summed up by hope and worship, along with a fair share of suffering to keep her fixed on eternity. Enclosed are the letters she sent to me so long ago, when we were both young and had much to learn.
—Cosima Escott Hamilton
Table of Contents
* * *
Hollinworth Hall, Northamptonshire, England
Rebecca Seabrooke didn’t have to open the letter in her palm to know its contents: the annual employment offer from England’s National Trust. More money than she would ever see at the private historical home at which she now worked. More prestige. Perhaps even a choice of locations, since so many of the country’s national home treasures were owned by the Trust.
She really must e-mail her father and ask him to stop wasting postage on such offers. Despite what at least one Hollinworth thought of the work she did here, Rebecca was convinced the Hall was as much a treasure as any other property listed in the Trust’s considerable inventory.
Brushing aside the letter, she turned her attention to her busy calendar. With her education staff manager on temporary family leave, Rebecca found herself taking charge of house-and-garden tours in between meetings with business associates and brides wanting to schedule the manor for banquets and weddings.
But none of that took precedence in Rebecca’s mind today, for today the owner of Hollinworth Hall would return to the private quarters he kept in the north wing. And she’d only learned of his impending arrival this morning.
Nonetheless she’d already asked Helen to make sure his rooms had been aired and cleaned. Fresh flowers from Rebecca’s favorite garden brightened every alcove, and even now Helen was baking his favorite bread. Rebecca could smell the fragrant herbs all the way up in her second-floor office. Given his mother’s recent quote in a local newspaper about closing the Hall to visitors, Rebecca knew she had a fight on her hands, and the son, the legal owner of the Hall, might very well be the rope in this tug-of–war.
Thankfully she’d outgrown the adolescent crush on him she’d once suffered. Her father had pointed him out as the son of the family he formerly worked for, and when she was twelve and he thirteen, she thought Quentin Hollinworth the most sophisticated and handsome male alive. He was still handsome—she knew that despite seeing him only once or twice a year—but growing up had taught her a few things, one lesson being that classes didn’t mix well, even in today’s all but egalitarian England. Though he wasn’t dating the daughter of an earl anymore, there was still his mother. She was proof enough the classes should mix only when both parties wanted to be in the same one.
Rebecca had far too much work to be dwelling on such irrelevant things. Directing her attention back to her computer screen, she pulled up her e-mail. The first one she noticed was from a college friend about meeting at a club in London this weekend, another event Rebecca would be sure to skip. She skimmed the content, part of her admiring the busy city life her friends had chosen, part of her knowing she’d followed the right path in staying out here in the country.
Before long, her gaze returned to the window, hearing the crunch of gravel beneath a car. Quentin Hollinworth had arrived. She imagined the estate caretakers, Helen and William Risdon, going out to greet him, welcoming him home.
Unwillingly she glanced at the bottom drawer of her desk, where she kept the newspaper society pages she couldn’t seem to resist. It was silly of her to have kept so many clippings, except that it all pertained to the family connected to the estate she ran. Keeping a scrapbook of their lives was part of her job as steward of their legacy. Preservation was more patriotic than personal. In that drawer was Quentin Hollinworth’s recent history, from his political work to his not-so-private breakup with Caroline Norleigh. Rebecca couldn’t think of Quentin without remembering all of that.