Ann Leslie, wife of a fisherman-farmer and mother of nine, faces one tragedy after another on a wind-swept coast in the far-northern Shetland Islands of the 1800s. Her two-room crofthouse and rocky plot of land leased from the wealthy landowner can hardly produce enough wool and grain. When her husband is gone at sea, what sustains her?
Though Ann is poor in material goods, she is rich in spirit. She draws strength from the ministers and neighbors she meets in Christian worship. Though she trusts in God, she bares her doubts in prayer: What disaster will befall her next? What good is God in the face of great loss? What comfort will sustain her through trials she never imagined?
Readers will ask themselves the questions that plague Ann, for who doesn't struggle with what to expect of a partner, how to keep children safe, and where to find God in life's losses and uncertainties? Shetland Mist tells how one resilient woman musters the courage to keep going even when she can barely detect a path forward through the thick and gloomy mist.
Heather Leslie Hammer is a United Methodist minister; teacher of history, English, and German; wife; and mother. She lives with her husband in the San Francisco Bay Area.
A study guide for Shetland Mist is available at www.heatherlesliehammer.com.
“In an act of historical imagination, Heather Hammer has captured crofters’ lives in the nineteenth-century Shetland Islands. She has also captured the essence of their Methodist spirituality and daily religious practice that made God real to them. Anyone who wants to understand how religion actually works to make life better will find this story encouraging.”
—Randi J. Walker, Pacific School of Religion, emerita
“Heather Hammer is an amazing storyteller. Having known her and her parents, it is fascinating to read this family, fictionalized story that her father, Robert C. Leslie, a renowned Methodist scholar and theologian, told her. I was completely drawn into the story and highly recommend Shetland Mist to anyone interested in stories of family, faith, migration, and change.”
—Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan, Claremont School of Theology
“Shetland Mist reveals the inner, spiritual prayer life of Ann Leslie, who slogs through the sloughs as well as highlands of faith, facing the struggles and tragedies of daily living. Ann’s theological reflections about what she believes, especially about suffering, from her Methodist teaching, worship, and song, are thought-provoking and inspiring. I found the story to be haunting for days to come, wanting others to have read it so I could talk about it with them!”
—Sally Dyck, bishop, United Methodist Church
“In this page-turning historical novel, Heather Leslie Hammer powerfully weaves her family history, the lives of early Methodists who sustained one another through communal faith, and a person’s journey to and with God through questions and doubts while seeking answers to the unfathomable suffering and hardship that humans face. Although the book is fiction, it is a most accessible theology book for anyone searching for the meaning of life and ways for embodied faith without theological jargon.”
—Boyung Lee, Iliff School of Theology
"It is the dream of many Americans to be able to trace their ancestry directly to the places from which our ancestors came. I took that goal for my Campbell ancestors in the summer of 1977. I’m still working on it. But Heather Leslie Hammer has done it! There ought to be an Academy Award for that! She tells the story of her forebears as a gifted storyteller, carefully laying out a plot focusing on personalities and sensitive to the nuances of the place 'over there' in 'the auld country.’ This is a story well worth the telling!"
Ted A. Campbell
Albert C. Outler Professor of Wesley Studies
Perkins School of Theology SMU
Introducing Shetland Mist
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