Mother's Tears

Her father gave her baby away moments after his birth.

Mariam Kellen was only seventeen when her father ignored her protests and took her baby from the midwife before she could hold him. Then he forced her to leave their Mississippi home and follow the Oregon Trail 2,000 miles away so she could never find the infant her heart longed for. Six years later, she teaches school in the small town of Willtown, Oregon, and she’s never stopped looking for the baby she still loves, although she knows she’ll never find him. She determines to go back someday to Mississippi and resume her search. But for now, another little boy near the age of her son has caught her attention. He and his father.

Dillon Booker returned from the War Between the States to find his plantation in ruins and his wife buried in the family plot. After their first two babies were stillborn, he was thrilled to learn the third was healthy, but by the time he made it home, their two remaining servants were caring for his son in a crumbling corner of his once fine home. He took them all to Oregon to escape the war and find the one man he’d admired. But on arrival, he discovered his neighbor, Pastor Kellen, had passed away. Several years later, his son enters school, and he meets the intriguing teacher who is his mentor’s daughter. A friendship develops, but can anything come of it when she resents the man he’s always looked up to?

Mother’s Tears is a story of family, growth, faith, and forgiveness when all seems impossible.