Can the Divine Quilter stitch together the torn pieces of Emilie’s heart? Divided between the love of her father and the desires of her heart, Emilie Heinrich must rely on the love and wisdom of the women in her quilting circle for support. Since Emilie is dedicated to her education and to helping her father in his general store, she is convinced she doesn't have time for love. But when a childhood friend returns to St. Charles, Missouri, after serving in the Civil War, his smile and charm captures Emilie’s eye and her heart. Quaid McFarland has a gentleness and humor that causes Emilie to question her indifference toward romance. But her German father sees only one thing when he looks at the young man: an Irish teamster. And Johann Heinrich is not about to let such a man court his beloved daughter. Her father’s prejudices test Emilie’s faith in God’s ability to mend the patchwork pieces of her life. Will she be forced to choose between honoring her father and a future with a husband and family of her own?

"A memoir that takes us through many worlds, through heartache and noble hopes, through the mysteries of family love. . . . Read Bending Toward the Sun and enrich your life."——Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters A miraculous lesson in courage and recovery, Bending Toward the Sun tells the story of a unique family bond forged in the wake of brutal terror. Rita Lurie was five years old when she was forced to flee her home in Poland to hide from the Nazis in a cramped, dark attic with fourteen members of her family. Young Rita watched her younger brother and her mother die before her eyes. But the tragedy of the Holocaust was only the beginning of Rita's story. Decades later, Rita's daughter Leslie began probing the traumatic events of her mother's childhood to discover how Rita's pain has affected not only Leslie's life and outlook but that of her own daughter, Mikaela, as well. The result is Bending Toward the Sun, a collaboration between mother and daughter that brings together the stories of three generations of a family to understand the legacy that unites, inspires, and haunts them all. Leslie Gilbert Lurie has served as president of the Los Angeles County Board of Education. Formerly an executive at NBC, where she worked on such hit shows as Cheers, Family Ties,Saved by the Bell, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Gilbert-Lurie lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

With his general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein is the symbol of genius. Being honored with the Nobel Prize in physics made him famous and firmed-up his reputation as a genius. Though Albert Einstein is remembered mostly as being a scientist, he was also concerned with helping people. During World War II, he assisted many Jews fleeing the Nazis. After the war, the people of Israel asked him to be their president. Einstein declined; he still had unanswered scientific questions to solve. Today, scientists are still hard at work trying to solve some of Einstein's questions.

"We are surrounded by poetry on all sides," Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) once wrote to his brother Theo. His art was a reflection of this belief. In these ekphrastic sonnets, the author reflects on themes Van Gogh returned to over and over again in his brief but intense journey from evangelist and pastor-in-training to painter of peasants, still lifes and growing things. As these poems reflect, Van Gogh's poetic imagination was best expressed in blossoming orchards, starry nights, sheaves of wheat, final harvests, and in his signature sunflowers--a metaphor for his own life, lifting petals to the sky, bending toward heaven.