Prairie Heart Publishing announces the release of A Prairie Heart, a collection of 19 short stories featuring the girls that the dolls represent. Each girl is named for a Christian virtue and is the main character in her own story. She faces a challenge, one common to all girls on their road to adulthood, that she must resolve using the virtue she is named for. Through the challenges the girls face, their resourcefulness in working out solutions, and the choices they make, these stories impart Christian values.

Read the preview that follows of Chapter X: Faith Fights Scarlet Fever.

 

"Faith never faltered, trusted the Lord
And out of her heart divine love poured."


Faith Fights Scarlet Fever

An epidemic of scarlet fever swept through Prairie Village. A feeling of fear and despair gripped the villagers. There was no treatment for scarlet fever. It began with a sore throat and a fever that turned into a red rash all over the body. Children coughed and coughed until their throats closed up and they stopped breathing. Mothers and fathers stood by helplessly as their little ones struggled for each breath. They asked each other why this horrible plague should have come upon them. God had blessed them with this rich earth and its abundance, and they had prospered in spite of blizzards and floods, droughts and tornadoes. They began to doubt God’s love for them--all except Faith.
The villagers stayed inside their houses, afraid to visit each other for fear of spreading the disease or bringing it home to their families. Faith was the only one of her group of playmates who had not yet fallen ill. In the early mornings she hitched up Jenny to the buckboard and set out to visit each little house and minister to her friends. All the children of some families were sick in bed, their parents working around the clock to care for them and no one to feed the livestock or chop wood for the stove. Faith’s mother said, "Faith, I am afraid that you, too, will catch scarlet fever. I’m afraid that we will lose you." But Faith replied, "Mother, the Lord orders us to help each other. I must trust in His word and do His will."

The time was early spring, time to prepare the fields for sowing, yet in every home there were grieving parents and sick or dying children. Instead of the fields sprouting wheat, the little Prairie cemetery began to sprout wooden crosses. Even Faith, with her trust in the Lord, began to weary of the sad faces, of the mothers holding limp infants. Most of all she regretted that her words had such little power to help in the face of such tragedy. How could she inspire her friends to trust the Lord while this epidemic raged on?

 

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