Finding the healing, hope, and second chances that comes with each new season of life.

Title: Through the Autumn Air (Every Amish Season Book #2)

Author: Kelly Irvin

Release Date: August 2018

About the Book

A mysterious English stranger appears in Mary Katherine Ropp’s kitchen one autumn night, heralding the beginning of a new chapter in the widow’s life.

The mother of ten, Mary Katherine is an empty-nester who lost her husband four years earlier. She misses her husband so much, she still talks to him. She pours her creative spirit into writing stories and serves as the district’s Budget newspaper scribe. An avid reader, her dream is to open a bookstore with her English friend, but the church elders want this wayward widow to work in an Amish-owned combination store.
When an English man breaks into her house looking for food, Mary Katherine doesn’t call the sheriff. She turns to her good friend, Ezekiel, who needs a cook at the restaurant he started after his wife died ten years earlier. Mary Katherine and Ezekiel set out separately to make sure their new friend isn’t caught up in the investigation, and their efforts keep bringing them together. They’re both still so in love with their long-gone spouses, so when the sparks begin to fly, they are beyond confused. Is it possible to find “The One” more than once in a lifetime?But as Mary Katherine stands by her dear friend after the death of her husband, Mary Katherine is reminded of the terrible risk in giving her heart to someone. Can these two people, well-versed in the pain of loss, put the past behind them and trust in the hope of the future?I'm a wife, mother, and bona fide Southern belle. Published author, expert corn bread maker, and Squirrel Princess.

My Thoughts

In Through the Autumn Air, book three in Kelly Irvin’s Every Amish Season series, we find ourselves back with our favorite widow group. What I find special about this group is that they span over several generations and support each other through heartache and new love.Mary Katherine is in a new season of her life, mother of ten and widow for the past four years, she is prepared to live out her final days alone in the home that she shared with her late husband.  Now that her last daughter is married, and she is facing living alone, her children step up and decide that at 60 years old she is no longer safe to live alone. Little did she know that God had different plans which starts to unfold when she hears an intruder in her home.
Ezekiel is owner of the Blue Martin Café in town and an 0ld school friend of Mary Katherine’s. After bumping into each other at her daughter’s wedding, he offers her a job cooking in his café. Definitely not the dream job that Mary Katherine had intended for herself.
It was great to see two individuals in the autumn of their lives, come together to help a stranger and in the process help each other heal the loss that they still carried like a badge of honor. I loved how Mary Katherine was determined to not be put out to pasture, but instead intended to follow her own dreams.
I liked the mystery of the burglar that preyed on the Amish, as well as, how Mary Katherine stood up for herself. I also loved that Kelly showed how the Amish and English worlds intertwine with not only Burke but also the employees of the Blue Martin Café.
This is a series book, but you do not have to read the first two before you read Mary Katherine’s story.
I received a copy of this novel from netgalley.com and Zondervan Fiction in return for my honest review. 

About the Author

Kelly Irvin's newest series, Every Amish Series, began with the debut of Upon a Spring Breeze, in April. The second book, Beneath the Summer Sun, will debut in January 2018. It is a four-book series published by Zondervan/HarperCollins Christian Publishing. This follows the Amish of Bee County series, The Saddle Maker's Son, released in June 2016. It is an ECPA bestseller. It follows The Bishop's Son, and the critically acclaimed bestseller, The Beekeeper's Son, which earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly. The reviewer called it "a beautifully woven masterpiece." The Beekeeper's Son was a finalist in the romance category of the 2016 ACFW Carol Awards Contest. 

Kelly has novellas in The Amish Christmas Gift and The Amish Marketplace, both of which were also ECPA bestsellers. She is also the author of the Bliss Creek Amish series and the New Amish Amish series. The first series includes To Love and To Cherish, A Heart Made New, and Love’s Journey Home, published by Harvest House. The New Hope Amish series includes Love Still Stands, followed by Love Redeemed, which was an ACFW Carol Award finalist, and A Plain Love Song.
Kelly has also penned two romantic suspense novels, A Deadly Wilderness and No Child of Mine..
The Kansas native is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and ACFW's San Antonio local chapter Alamo City Christian Fiction Writers. 
A graduate of the University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism, Kelly has been writing nonfiction professionally for thirty years. She studied for three semesters at the University of Costa Rica, learning the Spanish language. As a journalist, she worked six years in the border towns of Laredo and El Paso.
She worked in public relations for the San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department for 22 years before retiring earlier this year. Kelly has been married to photographer Tim Irvin for twenty-eight years. They have two young adult children and have two grandchildren. In her spare time, she likes to write short stories, read books by her favorite authors, and looks forward to visits with her grandchildren.