Enchanted Heart Read Online Free Page A

and the other immigrants from Germany, she knew in her young heart that the surrounding countryside would cradle them in its beauty. And, she realized, with an uplifted spirit, that if this picturesque new locality did not heal their hearts, it would certainly heal their aching bones.
    But there was no rest for the settlers, for they needed to build shelter, homes for the weary and hearths for the freezing families in the newborn town. Everyone helped in this endeavor and everyone worked as one body, one soul and one entity until all were cozy in their own little abodes. Some were put into communal housing until smaller homes could be built for them. But by winter time, all were under roof, something that they had not experienced since their first day in the new country.
    Marty and her family were settled into a large building with two other families who had also lost the heads of their households. Each family took its own private space in the structure, which was a diminutive area cordoned off by blankets that had been hung over ropes. This overcrowded confinement was fine with Marty, for she and Mama and Greta felt quite comfortable in their small quarters inside the communal dwelling. It seemed like home to Marty and home was a word that she had longed to say in her heart and on her lips since she had left the one where she had lived back in Germany.
    That home where she had been born seemed so far away, so long ago that Marty could not recall any part of it. All of her memories, both good and bad, had been replaced by the seemingly endless ride on the rolling waves of the ocean and then the cold and wet weeks on the shores of Texas, followed by the long and treacherous walk to the town that the older people called New Braunfels. It had all been gobbled up by the boundless grief of losing Papa and the trepidation of facing this new adventure without him to guide her and to take care of her mournful family, a role that she had lovingly assumed that dreadful day on the prairie while life had passed her by.
    But life seemed to renew itself as time elapsed and Mama’s heart was somehow healed by the loving arms of Papa’s business partner Sven Reinhold. Marty did not complain about the union, for seeing Mama smiling again made her love the new man in their life, even though he was not new at all to them. Her new step-father, whom she had known since she was a baby, was a loving and dear man to her and she could not think of a more perfect man to replace her Papa in her life, if not in her heart.
    Sven built a new home for them on the land that had been deeded to him, which lay just a mile from town. Being a married man with a family to provide for, he had been granted over three hundred acres to farm. He tilled the rocky dirt from sun up to sun down until it was planted and waiting for the sun and the rain to make a crop out of it before he rode into town to rebuild the business that he and his former partner had created before their journey to Texas.
    As a blacksmith, a cooper and a carpenter Sven had been Papa’s partner in the old country. Together, they had formed their business in the little town of Wasserburg, Germany on the Inn River where they had not only forged tools and farming equipment but beautiful tin-ware and copper kettles. In his tiny new shop on the edge of New Braunfels, Sven not only made harness rings, plows, shovels, and other farming implements, but he also fashioned ornate bowls, kettles, pots and other fine household utensils. His new business brought in enough money for him to build a bigger house by the time the twins turned fifteen. Together, the family lived in the new house until the girls became wives and moved into their own homes.
    Marty married Elias Ingram when she was nineteen, after she had studied diligently for her teacher’s certificate and after she had established a means of supporting herself if she was ever expected to do so. She loved him because of his intellectual formality