Patterns Of Love (Revised)

Book two, Patterns of Love, winner of a RITA award for best inspirational romance, features Swedish immigrant Inga Linberg. Inga isn’t like her sisters; she isn’t pretty or flirtatious, and she wouldn’t know how to attract her man if her life depended upon it. She fully expects to spend her life assisting her minister father in his pastoral duties and creating her uniquely beautiful story quilts. Inga has a good heart and is a hard worker, and she is happy to volunteer to help when a beleaguered dairy farmer, Dirk Bridger, enters her life. Dirk himself has never married, but the sudden and tragic deaths of his brother and sister-in-law compels Dirk to come back to the family farm to care for his ailing mother and two young nieces. Dirk is a man whose dreams and faith have dried uq, buried beneath disappointment after disappointment. He has longed for adventure, to travel the world and see exotic places. Instead, he is stuck in Iowa, living his brother’s life, raising his brother’s children, tending his brother’s farm. So Inga goes to work as the Bridgers’ housekeeper and soon loses her heart to a family — and to a man — whom she thinks she can never have. But when Mrs. Bridger dies, Inga’s parents insist that she return home, since it would be unacceptable for her to live in the Bridger home with no other adult than herself and Dirk present. When the household begins to fall apart — and the two girls miss Inga terribly — Dirk proposes marriage. But this, he carefully explains, is merely a marriage of convenience that will not be consummated, and the two will be able to have it annulled when the girls are old enough that Inga is no longer needed. It is clear that Dirk expects one day to escape from this — marriage — and from the farm itself. Can Inga accept this kind of arrangement with a man she loves? And if so, how will she be able to live with him without being able to express that love? Can a tall, willowy Swedish immigrant erase the bitterness in his heart and give him something new to dream about?