Excerpt from Life, and Death, and Giants by Ron Rindo, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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Hannah Fisher

My Rachel was an easy birth, the easiest. Her brother Caleb, no. All nine months I carried him, I felt too sick to eat. Some days I managed only a few spoons of warm oats and honey. In my final month, the fire shooting down my legs was so intense I could not sleep. When my waters broke, Caleb gave me pain I didn't know a woman could bear, a thirty-hour labor through one sleepless night into the next, each contraction exquisite agony. In my feeble efforts to endure it, I thought of Jacob Hutter and Dirk Willems, Amish martyrs who had been burned at the stake; I pictured our dear Lord on the cross, nails through His hands and feet, my own pain so meager compared to theirs! In the frightened, tear-stained faces of the women at my bedside—my mother; my closest friend, Abiah; my sister, Meg—I could see I might die and take Caleb with me. I was but a girl of eighteen, married to Josiah, my Godly husband, for less than one year.

I prayed to endure the Lord's affliction, that special suffering He reserves for His own, and I should have opened my arms to death, overjoyed to join my Savior in His kingdom. But I did not. I sobbed like a child, spilling tears for the babies I would never hold, for my loving husband, whom I as yet barely knew, and most ashamedly, for my comfortable home, my gardens, my beautiful herd of goats—all earthly things of no consequence, the vanity of vanities. I believe that is why God sent me back into this world. My faith had not been large enough.

As I felt the shadow of death cover me like a heavy blanket, the Lord saw fit to contract my womb so powerfully, I felt my body cleave in half, as if His mighty sword had opened me. My sister, Meg, who had been on the floor on her knees, sprang up on the bed and burrowed between my legs like a badger.

When I awoke to find Caleb on my chest, his soft infant skin pressed to mine, the rope of life still connecting us, I cried tears of thanks. But my joy was short-lived. Soon my beautiful boy's hands and lips, and then his body, went blue. He would not suckle. Listless, he opened his mouth to cry but made no sound. Abiah sent for an English midwife, but my lovely firstborn perished in my arms before she arrived. My grief proved nearly unshakable. It would be a year before I consented to begin again in our marriage bed.

Rachel decided early on she'd make up for all Caleb had put me through. All nine months she floated blissfully inside me, soft and gentle as a bubble. I had no morning sickness, no shooting pains down my legs. And when it came time for her to join us in the world, she announced her intentions in the morning, after I'd had a full night's rest, her waters spilling warm on my feet.

An hour later I'd barely begun my lying in, with Meg and Abiah at my bedside, when I felt this powerful, beautiful heat, as if I'd spread my legs immodestly wide before the summer sun. Meg squealed in surprise. I had not even begun to push, and Rachel's head emerged, the crown a swirl of dark hair, her bright eyes open. With the next contraction, Meg turned Rachel's shoulders slightly so, and my daughter slid free of my body, the easiest birth God has ever given to a mother and child. That night I was able to take a walk outside. I carried Rachel with me, naked in my arms next to my warm skin but for a shoulder wrap of Shetland wool. I walked along the fencerow and watched the sunset spill itself pink and orange along the horizon, and I cried with happiness. I had a beautiful daughter to love, another woman in the house to be a woman with.

But the Lord does not often give without taking away. He understands our weakness. When our desires are granted, our gratitude wanes, and we almost immediately turn to wanting more. Just months after Rachel's birth, our Lord sent Josiah a terrible sickness, no appetite, fever, fatigue. He took to bed when his throat began to swell like a bullfrog's. Beneath the covers, his manly parts grew to the size of oranges. His bloodied urine stained the bedsheets. He suffered so. How fervently I prayed for his recovery. Mumps, my mother said. A bad case, but he won't die. Josiah was in bed for a week. It took another week to regain his strength, but a hidden injury remained. Though we wanted many more children, and yearned for them, Josiah's infection rendered us infertile. I cried many hours over this, but always tried to be contented with the two beautiful children the Lord had provided me, though He took one to be with Him in heaven.

Excerpted from Life, and Death, and Giants by Ron Rindo. Copyright © 2025 by Ron Rindo. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.