Beth Ann Weaver grew up in Wayne County, Ohio, on a road where the school bus shared the shoulder with buggies, and her family’s nearest neighbors — the Yoders, three farms of them — set the rhythm of her childhood: barn raisings her father lent his hands to, quilt sales her mother never once left empty-handed, and the particular quiet of a Sunday that meant something next door. She has been trying to write that quiet down ever since.

For twenty-six years Beth Ann ran the church library in Orrville, Ohio, where she developed what she calls her doctorate in reader mail: two generations of women telling her exactly which Amish novels rang true and which ones dressed English stories in kapps. When she finally wrote her own, she made herself two promises — the details would be right, and the faith would live in the choices, not the dialogue.

Her Maple Bend Amish series follows the Bontrager family through the seasons of a Holmes County district: widows who get second springs, carpenters who court by fixing porch steps, sisters with two suitors and one honest heart, and the brother in the English truck at the farm gate whom nobody stops loving. The recipes are real (her neighbor tested the pie), the German is checked, and the door stays closed with a smile.

Beth Ann still lives in Wayne County with her husband, Dale, a retired feed-mill manager, in a farmhouse with a porch swing that gets serious use. She quilts badly and joyfully — her guild has asked her to stick to the writing — bakes a shoofly pie she will defend against all comers, and keeps three grandchildren in whoopie pies and stories. She believes a repaired porch step is one of the great love letters.