Roses in God's Garden

Our Kara story is co-written by our mother-and-daughter writing team, Joy Marie and Jennaya Dunlap. Most of the chapters are written by both of us. Mama writes part of the chapter, and Jennaya writes part of the chapter.

This has been really fun for us to do, and it is partly a reflection and a celebration of our relationship as mother and daughter best friends. We are each other's dearest woman friend. Our sweetest time of day is when we get up early in the morning and go out together to water, pick ripe fruit, and plant wildflowers across our family acre, with the birds all singing and the sunrise spilling colors all around. While we work we love to talk and sing.

This is a fictional story of a 13-year-old girl who lives on a chicken and dairy farm in the midwestern USA, and who is learning how to become a good helper to her Mama, with sometimes humorous and sometimes heartwarming results. Kara tries so hard and also makes lots of understandable mistakes.

As her mother's pregnancy becomes increasingly endangered, Kara takes on most of the responsibility for being the woman of the house. With Mama's advice to help her along, and Mama's supportive warmth and cheer, Kara learns to care for her two younger brothers and two-year-old sister and her father, keeping house herself at 13 years old. When Kara tries to surprise her Mama with breakfast in bed, mother and daughter have a wonderful time together, until Mama sees the kitchen afterward.

Can Kara take on these new responsibilities without causing too much damage and getting way behind on the house? Can she still keep up on her home school studies? How can she ever get the kitchen back in order after a tornado crashes all the kitchen contents across the kitchen floor? And will the baby live? Will Mama make it through this dangerous pregnancy? Preteen and teenage girls alike really enjoy our Kara story, which is being shared in installments in Roses In God's Garden magazine for Christian girls.