How to Tell if You're in a Christian Historical Novel

Inspired by those AWESOME articles in The Toast


someone sets fire to your barn

there's no midwife in town and Eppy’s child is breech.

the mercantile is out of homespun calico

the stove in the schoolhouse sputters and embers catch in your eye just as the dashingly enigmatic new sheriff visits to pay you his compliments as guardian of his orphaned nephew (who is precocious but endearing)

you have a picture of your deceased parents in your reticule but the memory fades in your heart

the civil war embittered the man you hope will court you and he's still in love with his dead wife.

you answered the advertisement for helpmeets and you're on a train, the barren land whizzing past the window and taking your childhood in its stride. Down the track a widower awaits you. You've never kissed a man. You send a million cluttered musings heavenward.

You burned the bumbleberry pie

The cows are diseased

No one has fixed the fence.

There are not enough italics in the world to match the prayers inspired by the new minister’s homily on Ephesians

The oldest Wilcott child has dyslexia but it is not, as of yet, a diagnosable disease.

Will no one teach the gruff –but- gold-hearted blacksmith to read?

Your sewing circle has been stuck in Proverbs 31 for weeks

“With God as the center of your lives, you will build a home with grace as the foundation.”

Your new bustle is torn by your run-in with a stowaway sheep and an un-sturdy carriage wheel.

The banker- philanthropist-mayor-real estate-mining-tycoon is a wolf in sheep's clothing.