Bringing Lydia Home

Three plain travelers. One lost daughter. A Christmas journey into the heart of New York City.

Years ago, Lydia Stoltzfus ran from her strict Amish life toward the glittering promise of the Englisch world. She hasn’t written home since. Now, at twenty-one and heavily pregnant, she finds herself alone in a noisy city apartment, clutching a part-time job, a pile of unpaid bills, and a heart full of regret. The baby’s father has moved on. The skyscrapers that once felt exciting now crowd in like cold stone walls.

Back in Lancaster County, a worn letter finally arrives. Lydia is alive, expecting a child, and more frightened than she dares admit. Her brother Amos refuses to sit and pray from a distance. Before Advent is over, he will find her. With him go Verna Mast, a wise older woman, and Caleb Yoder—Lydia’s quiet childhood friend, the man she nearly courted before she ran.

On crowded sidewalks and in cramped waiting rooms, Amos and Verna push Lydia toward repentance and family. Caleb simply stays at her side: hauling groceries, attending appointments, sitting beside her at church, and listening when the others have gone to bed. In a tiny apartment far from the cornfields, Lydia begins to see that the people she left behind are the ones willing to fight for her now.

But going home won’t be simple. Her father is wary. The bishop has hard questions. Lydia fears she’ll always be the girl who ran, the girl who sinned, the girl with an Englisch baby in her arms.

When a winter storm collides with a dangerous delivery date, Lydia must decide whom she will trust with her life and her child’s future. And Caleb must risk his own guarded heart by telling the truth he’s carried since they were teenagers:

He didn’t come to the city just to bring Lydia home for Christmas. He came because, after everything, she is still the home his heart longs for.

Bringing Lydia Home is Book 2 in the Cradles of Grace series: a poignant, hope-filled Amish single mother Christmas romance about prodigals, forgiveness, and the “wise ones” God sends when we are most lost.