Threads of Joy

Joy Westfall seems too young to be jaded, but the twenty-eight-year-old has already weathered more hardship and sorrow than most people twice her age. She moves home to Paris, Tennessee, with her three-year-old daughter—the only good thing to have come from her mistake of a marriage—and sets up housekeeping, as well as her tailoring business, in a tiny abode she inherited from her aunt. She doesn’t much mind living on the outskirts of town, especially since the residents of Paris seem disinclined to welcome a divorcée. The same is true of the congregants of the church next door. Just as well. Joy doesn’t need their sympathy.
Lucas Jennings feels blessed to be shepherding his own congregation so early in life. Since his arrival, attendance at Paris Evangelical Church has swelled—of course, it can’t hurt that he’s an eligible bachelor. Single women flock to the church from all over Henry County, yet none of them—not even the most pious—manages to capture his attention quite like the newcomer next door, who is hungry for the gospel but unwilling to admit it.
A spark ignites between the “scandalous” divorcée and the upright pastor, but Joy’s rocky past has made her wary of male attention, and her feelings of failure, not to mention her disbelief in a God of love, drives an even deeper wedge between them. Moreover, Lucas puts the brakes on their budding friendship when his congregants begin to question his intentions. When an unforeseen danger threatens Joy and her daughter, will the tight-knit town stand by and watch? Or will they open their hearts to the God of mercy and allow Him to do an unexpected work?