Friday, November 6, 2026

Fiction Friday: Find Your Story in Shumard Oak Bend with Heidi Gray McGill

Find Your Story in Shumard Oak Bend
By Heidi Gray McGill

Everyone who arrives in Shumard Oak Bend, Missouri, comes carrying something heavy. An orphan runs from a forced marriage. A soldier comes home from the war with more guilt than he can name. A young woman loses her sight and believes her dreams went with it. They arrive as strangers, and by the last page, they leave as family.

That is the heart of the Discerning God's Best series. Seven novels and four shorter stories follow one growing community from the 1850s through the 1870s, and every one of them asks a question you have probably asked too. How do I know what God says is best for me? Each book stands on its own, so you can begin wherever your story meets theirs.

Desire of My Heart is for you if a door closed and you believed the story ended there. Rachel holds to the promise that “joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5), and she finds it in a marriage of convenience and a family she never planned.

With All My Heart is for you if rejection taught you to keep love at a distance. Singing Bird learns that accepting love takes its own kind of courage, and Pete’s patience gives her room to try.

Matters of the Heart is for you if you fight hard for everyone else and forget you were never meant to fight alone. Katie shelters orphans no one else will claim, and help arrives in a war-weary soldier.

Healing of the Heart is for you if depending on anyone feels like weakness. Teddy guards her
independence until a quiet doctor shows her that some walls need to come down.

Written on My Heart is for you if you are waiting on God and have already decided what you want Him to say. Betsy learns to listen while her childhood friend wrestles free of his past.

Keeper of My Heart is for you if you have been the capable one for so long that you are not sure who you are without it. Cecelia and Jimmy discover that strength and surrender can live in the same heart.

Vision of My Heart is for you if loss changed the future you pictured. Serafina loses her sight to smallpox, but God was never blind to her future.

Not sure where to begin? Start at the very beginning, as my gift to you. The two prequels, Before We Belong and Deep in My Heart, are free in eBook and audiobook when you sign up for my newsletter at https://heidigraymcgill.com/free_Christmas_book

If you would rather listen than read, you will find my audiobooks at all major retailers and free on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@authorheidigraymcgill/?sub_confirmation=1 Sign up today, download your two free prequels, and step into Shumard Oak Bend tonight. Your new favorite family is waiting to meet you.

Book Blurb: The Discerning God’s Best Series

Before a single stranger became family, one couple chose obedience over comfort. Everything that followed built on that choice.

The Discerning God’s Best series spans nearly three decades, from a candlelit Nativity in South Carolina to the wild edges of the Missouri frontier. Eleven stories. One growing family. One unrelenting truth: wounded hearts arrive as strangers and leave as family.

For readers who love the words of Lauraine Snelling, Misty M. Beller, Lacy Williams, Linda Ford, Naomi Rawlings, Shanna Hatfield, Lynn Austin, Robin Lee Hatcher, Karen Witemeyer, Liz Tolsma, and Jody Hedlund, this series delivers everything you come back for. Clean, faith-forward romance. Frontier grit. Characters who feel like neighbors. A God who is never as absent as He seems.

Start with Before We Belong. Binge the series on Kindle Unlimited. Stay until the final page of Vision of My Heart. https://heidigraymcgill.com/discerning-gods-best-series/

Connect with Heidi
Website: https://heidigraymcgill.com/
Free prequels with newsletter signup: https://heidigraymcgill.com/free_Christmas_book
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/heidigraymcgill
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/AuthorHeidiGrayMcGill/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorHeidiGrayMcGill
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@authorheidigraymcgill/?sub_confirmation=1
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/HeidiGrayMcGill
Bluesky: https://heidigraymcgill.bsky.social
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/heidigraymcgill
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/heidi-gray-mcgill?follow=true

Photo Credits:
Author photo and book image: Courtesy Heidi Gray McGill
Reader: Pixabay/Pexels

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