A Picture of Grace · A story told in 24 letters

She had a plan.
Then she found
Juniper Springs.

The porch lights are on at Rosewood House. Inside, Abby Harper is trying to make a life out of the one she never planned to have. There is a school that needs her, a history teacher just beyond the shared wall, and a small Virginia town that is beginning to feel dangerously like home.

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Rosewood House at rain-washed dusk, with two red doors and porch lights — Rosewood House, after the rain

A glimpse of Juniper Springs

Twenty-four weeks.
A life she never planned.

She did not expect to fall in love with the life she found.

35 seconds · hopeful cinematic score · captions in video

The story

Heartbreak brought her here.
Love asked her to stay.

Abby laughing on the Rosewood House steps — Abby, at Rosewood House

Seven months after her engagement ends, Abby Harper still has the wedding linens. She has also learned how to get through a day without saying much about the life she thought she would have. When a photography teaching job opens at a small Christian academy in Juniper Springs, she takes it for twenty-four weeks. Long enough to catch her breath. Short enough, she thinks, to keep her heart out of it.

But there is an old darkroom waiting to be brought back to life. A fiftieth-anniversary exhibit to make with students whose stories begin to matter to her. And at Rosewood House, just across the shared porch, there is Graham Dawson: a history teacher who notices more than Abby would like, and whose beagle, Franklin, has never recognized the dignity of a closed door. Somewhere between a disastrous laundry-room flood and a county-fair Ferris wheel ride they both refuse to call a date, Abby begins to laugh without having to remember how.

Joy does not arrive without questions. Abby has never stopped believing in God, though lately her prayers sound more like careful conversations with a stranger. An anonymous prayer partner keeps asking the very things she has avoided asking herself. Then a chance to return to Richmond makes the life she is building in Juniper Springs feel suddenly fragile. The school needs her. Graham may want her to stay. What does she want, if she lets herself tell the truth?

A Picture of Grace is a tender, quietly funny romance about the work of beginning again: the friendships that find us, the faith that survives honest questions, and the surprising ways love can make a life larger. Come for the rain-washed porch and the little town. Stay for Abby, and the woman she is becoming.

From Abby’s letters

The town of Juniper Springs seen from the overlook — The view from Juniper Overlook

The academy's neglected darkroom — Light returns to the darkroom

A pajama garment after the Rosewood laundry flood — And then there is Franklin

How the story arrives

Open one letter.
Stay for the next.

Over twenty-four weeks, Abby writes from Juniper Springs as it becomes part of her life. Each email brings another piece of the story, with photographs and artifacts woven in: a school exhibit taking shape, the unexpected comedy of sharing Rosewood House, an almost-date at the fair, and the questions she can no longer put away. Open one letter, then look forward to the next.

A photograph emerging in the academy darkroom developer tray

Your invitation to Juniper Springs

Let her letters come to you.

Step into Abby’s life as it unfolds. Your welcome email arrives after purchase, followed by the first letter; the rest of the story arrives weekly.

All 24 story letters delivered by email
Photographs and story artifacts within the letters
One complete, faith-filled romance to return to each week

A Picture of Grace

You’ll wish you lived here.

Come to Juniper Springs. Abby will write soon.

She had a plan.Then she foundJuniper Springs.

Twenty-four weeks.A life she never planned.