A True Love Story

By Katie Harris

Karla was amid her teenage years when she unexpectedly met the love of her life. A blind date arranged by her sister changed the course of her life forever. Instant love and a long-distance romance led to a broken heart mended decades later by her true love. Follow Karla’s journey as she discovers, loses, and once again finds her lifelong true love and soul mate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638140498

Book preview

1

Karla Harmon grew up in a rural community. Her family lived on a farm. Her parents rented the house she and her siblings shared with them. James and Maggie had four young kids all under five years of age. The home was only three bedrooms for the family of six. Three of James’s siblings also lived in the cramped house. His parents divorced early in his life, leaving him to look after his minor brothers and sister.

James was only nineteen years old himself when he and Maggie got married. She was still a minor, being a mere seventeen-year-old. However, despite their tender ages, the couple saw the young teens needed a place to stay to avoid being put into the system. Naturally, James and Maggie Harmon gladly opened their doors to them without hesitation or question. After all, Maggie’s childhood had been quite tragic as well, so she had firsthand knowledge of being bounced around from pillar to post. There just were not enough family members who had homes large enough to take in four orphaned children.

Maggie’s family was small compared to James’s mostly due to the fire that destroyed her family home and killed her mother and baby brother. Such tragedy left the young children traumatized and unable to cope with the real world. Maggie was already a shy and introverted child, so being thrust into such a big living nightmare just about destroyed her.

The Pruitt family was now merely existing, and the small children were left with feelings of abandonment and fear. They had to find a new normal. Clyde Pruitt felt so much guilt because he knew he should have brought water up from the well for his beautiful family before leaving for work that horrible day, but he didn’t. He was running late for work and just neglected to do so.

Clyde was prone to stopping off for a beer or two after work with his buddies and maybe playing a few games of pool before heading on home to his family. Had he just gone home right after work the night before his nightmare began, none of this would have happened. He would have gone to fetch the water from the well before leaving for work as his wife had asked him to do.

The horrible events of that day were now burned into Clyde’s memory with deadly accuracy. If losing his wife and son in the fire that consumed his home weren’t big enough horrors, the folks in their small mountain community simply refused to let Clyde heal from the nightmarish event. Everywhere he went, he could hear the whispers about how he just left for work without regard for his family’s need for water. It seemed the whole town blamed him for the deaths of his wife and son. It serves as no surprise that Clyde turned into a serious alcoholic. He’d already had a bit of a problem with drinking as it was.

Clyde was diagnosed with cancer at nineteen years old and given a six-month window to live and get his life in order. Clearly, the doctors got it wrong. Clyde grew into an adult and went on to have a family of his own. But the psychological damage had been done.

Hearing that kind of prognosis at such a young age would most likely cause any teen to throw caution to the wind. Clyde became irresponsible and took everything as a dare. He began acting out and doing all kinds of things he had been taught not to. He drank too much, partied too much. In the end, it was much too late to undo the damage of his actions by the time he realized how wrong they were. Not only would he suffer the consequences of his choices; but his small children, his family, and his friends would feel the backlash of his actions too.

2

Maggie met Beth Harmon through a school friend. They were instant friends since both their families were somewhat dysfunctional. Maggie’s life seemed, on the surface, to be more tragic, but the Harmons were just a different kind of difficult.

Beth was the oldest daughter of thirteen children, and her family was living in poverty. They lived quite some distance outside town, and the children had to walk to school each day. They lived down a gravel road which was more like a muddy creek bed most days. It didn’t take much more than a sprinkle to cause the stream flowing through the Harmon’s property to overflow its banks and to turn the dirt in the road into a muddy mess.

James, being the oldest of the kids, felt the biggest responsibility to make things easier for his family; and his father agreed, pushing James almost to his breaking point every single day. He had to wake at 4:00 a.m. to help with milking and preparing the animals on the home farm to move on with their day. After doing all the morning chores, James also walked to the two-room schoolhouse to start a fire in the potbelly woodstove so that his classmates wouldn’t arrive to a cold school.

For his efforts, James received ten cents a day. He used his earnings to buy clothes for himself. He had to use his own money to purchase them, but he was glad to have clothing to wear. By the end of the school year, James and his siblings would have to wear clothes with holes in them unless Lilian was able to repair them with patches and such.

Gil was a farmer like most men in the community. He worked hard and did the best he could, but there just never seemed to be enough for such a large family no matter how many hours he worked. For starters, he had to work extra hard to raise enough crops just to feed his family. Everyone was expected to pull their weight. The boys were in the fields, helping with the crops after school, while the girls completed inside chores, such as laundry, cooking, and cleaning. Lillian worked as a nurse’s aide which simply meant she did all the grunt work like changing bedpans and changing soiled bedsheets.

Maggie’s was a small family, so being surrounded by all these people after marrying James suddenly felt a bit overwhelming. She was brought up in a strict Christian family, however, and passionately believed the man in the family to be the head of the household. She did love her new family as well and would never hope to see any of her sister or brothers-in-law wind up in the system because no one wanted to give them a place to live. The fact that her home was only a six-room house didn’t deter her in the least.

It was a farmhouse after all, and the bedrooms were big. The boys shared a room, and the girls shared a one, discussion closed. James got up at 3:30 a.m. to go to work in the morning. When he got home, he always worked in the garden and milked the cow. There was always something to be done on their farm.

Maggie would freeze or can the food from the garden. The kids even got into the action by churning the cream from the top of the milk to make butter. They also had chores which they were expected to do, but they were rewarded with a slight allowance.

The older kids got part-time jobs mowing lawns and such but really couldn’t do much of that either due to lack of transportation. They were able to do work for the landlord to make just a little spending money of their own. It wasn’t much; but it kept them out of trouble, and they were able to go out with their friends to the movies or to a ball game.

The Harmons did the best they could to raise their big family on an extremely limited income and in a really cramped home. Despite the less-than-desirable situation, the children were happy most of the time, and the parents saw to it that everyone had more than they needed. In fact, Maggie had such a big heart that she had an open-door policy. She believed that no child should go hungry or homeless; so if a child needed a place to sleep or food to eat, her door was always open.

James’s parents eventually reconciled, so the older children moved back home with their parents. Although everyone was glad to have the kids back together with the family, it left James, Maggie, and their children with