Her Borrowed Courtship

Nineteen-year-old Malinda Mast loves her days at the farmers' market, where the plain world and the Englisch one meet across a table of strawberries. She is not ready to kneel for baptism. Not yet. She wants to see the world first, just a little, before she promises it away forever.

So when a charming Englisch truck driver asks her to supper, she says yes before her sensible half can object. There is only one problem. In her district, an unattached girl's days belong to everyone. They watch. They gossip.

The only way to buy her freedom is to appear spoken for.

Andrew Flaud has been her friend since they were children building dams in the creek. Steady, quiet, and safe, he agrees to court her in name only for one summer. No one will ask questions. Come fall, they will part, and no harm done to anyone.

But a borrowed beau has a way of becoming the realest thing in a girl's life. As the summer deepens, Malinda begins to wonder whether the glittering world she chased was ever what her heart wanted at all.

She set a true love to guard a false one. Can she see it before the fall communion takes it all away?