Janet Stafford has been scribbling stories onto paper since she learned to write. Adult practicalities intervened putting her dreams of writing on the back burner. However, several years ago she felt a divine “nudging” to “tell the story.” That story became her first successful novel Saint Maggie (B.R.A.G. Medallion award winner). Stafford recently felt a new “nudging” – from her legion of fans wanting more - and once again combined her worlds of history, religion and fiction to pen her amazingstand-alone sequel Walk By Faith (The Saint Maggie Series – Book 2).

“When I first started writing about Maggie and her family, I saw my work as Christian fiction,’ says Stafford. “But when I began Walk by Faith, I began to understand that I actually am writing about diverse people in a particular historical context - despite the title of the novel. I do hope, though that the books will inspire hope, because we certainly need hope these days.”

No one thought that the Second Street boarding house would be destroyed by arsonists. No one wanted to believe that Nate Johnson would be beaten simply because of his race. But things have gotten ugly in Blaineton, New Jersey. It is in the middle of the Civil War and the abolitionist sympathies of the people in Maggie Blaine Smith’s boarding house have made them a target for racist and Copperhead forces. When the violence threatens to get worse, the sheriff suggests that they move until things calm down. Maggie’s husband Eli has a proposal for them: his two sisters need help aiding fugitive slaves evade the Confederate Army and find freedom in the north. However, first they must relocate to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Maggie and her family risk the move, hoping that they will find some badly-needed peace there. But can that happen when newspaperman Eli and reporter/photographer Chester Carson are off covering the war? Can they find peace when Maggie’s son-in-law Edgar and her other daughter’s beau, Patrick, are still in the army? How can Maggie and the remaining members of her family start anew in a strange place? And how will all of them hold on to their courage, strength, and faith as the war rages and Confederate and Union forces march into Pennsylvania?

“My overall themes of Walk By Faith are that understanding comes from conversation, not through name-calling and conflict; hope and faith come in different ways to different people and love WILL triumph over hate every time,” adds Stafford.