Books by Ann Goltz
What Happened to Zinnia
Two daughters. Two mothers. One devastating connection.
Harmony McIntyre wants peace in her life, and she knows she’ll have it once everyone around her is happy. But the needs of her four children, her often-absent husband, and her aging parents all compete for Harmony’s time and attention, frustrating each other and ensuring that no one is happy, least of all Harmony.
Penny Crampton lives next door to Harmony, but has never bothered to become friendly with her neighbor. Penny prefers the company of her dog and six cats, plus the occasional romp in the hay with Erik, the single retired veteran who lives across the street. Penny has the peace Harmony seeks, partly because she avoids people as much as possible, and partly because she sent her declining mother to a memory care facility years ago. Her peace is shattered, however, when her mother, Zinnia, somehow wanders onto a highway exit ramp and is run over.
When Harmony discovers her mother is responsible for the fatal hit-and-run accident, she makes a snap decision that locks her onto a path that endangers everyone around her. When she realizes that the woman killed was her next door neighbor’s mother, Harmony’s fragile hold on the situation unravels.
What happened to Zinnia forces Harmony to reckon with her limits and compels Penny to examine whether her solitary life is really what she wants. These two daughters must reconsider everything they thought they knew, about their mothers, about themselves, and about what constitutes a peaceful life.
Raised and homeschooled in her family’s home, isolated from the world except for their insular church community, Hope Wagner has little exposure to people and environments outside of her father’s beliefs. That all changes when her father marries the worldly newcomer to their church.
Jennifer Levine has always wanted a large, close-knit family that lives according to traditional family values, just like in her beloved historical novels. But after her marriage to Michael, a handsome widower at her new church, Jennifer’s life becomes a nightmare of inadequacy and futility as she tries to embody her husband’s idea of a virtuous woman.
Michael Wagner will stop at nothing to ensure his wife and daughters fulfill their God-given roles as helpmeets and mothers, and does everything in his power to eliminate the dangerous ideas his new wife has introduced into his family.
When Jennifer finally rejects Michael’s control over her, she launches the family into a crisis. Now, to escape the future her father has planned for her, Hope must find the courage to leave the only world she’s ever known and pursue a life she’s never been given the tools to manage.
Virtuous Women
The sheltered eldest daughter of a Quiverfull family. Her naive new stepmother. The patriarch who controls them both.
Needing Hope
“You need to be mother to them all.”
Hope Wagner was taught to believe that virtuous women are happy and fulfilled as homemakers and mothers. But when her own mother dies giving birth to her eleventh child, fifteen-year-old Hope must take over raising and homeschooling her ten younger siblings while keeping her father’s house. Despite what she’s been taught, all Hope feels is exhaustion, frustration, and despair.
Meet Hope Wagner and her family two years before the events of Virtuous Women, Ann Goltz’s moving debut novel.
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