In The Shade of the Jacaranda

When faced with life-changing circumstances, will their love be enough to hold their future together?

After Angelica Amante defied her wealthy parents’ wishes and married an illiterate Mexican stable hand, Antonio Perez, she thought their love had overcome the biggest hurdle they would ever face. But just as Angelica throws herself into her work as a defense attorney, she discovers she is pregnant—and her world is turned upside down.

As her husband struggles to save his fledgling landscape business, Angelica must juggle the challenges of a demanding boss and an unexpected pregnancy. Then their doctor becomes concerned about the health of their unborn child and their relationship with her parents becomes troubled. Soon both Angelica and Antonio are confronted with decisions that shake them to their core. Will their faith in God and their love for each other sustain them—even when it seems their dreams are slipping away?

Prologue

Near Guadalajara, Mexico

The old woman rose. Slapping the dust from the creases of her tattered skirt, she stepped out of the shade of the jacaranda tree. It was time to go to the stream. Shading her eyes with her hand, she scanned the fields that stretched before her. In stark relief against the cloudless sky, she saw her daughter’s back curved over the plow that dug furrows into the hard earth, the dry ground as unyielding as the hunger that plagued them.

Behind the plow, her nine grandchildren carefully pressed seed into the narrow ditches. The smallest ones were at the end of the line, squatting as they walked, one foot on each side of the furrow, hands patiently brushing loose dirt back into the shallow trough.

She would not bother them. Time was short to work the land that fed them . . . and it was better that she go alone.

Ducking back under the branches of the tree that was their home, she returned to the spot where she had been sitting and knelt beside the baby. She took her shawl, made a pouch, and strapped the crying child to her back. Using the tree for support, she stood. She crossed herself and began the long walk to the river’s edge, where cool water would quiet the feverish child, if only for a short time.

As she walked a breeze picked up, cooling her bare feet and face. She whispered a word of thanks to God. The kilometers stretched behind her.

She stopped. Hesitating. The baby had become quiet. All thoughts left her as a sense of dread surged within her. She willed herself to move faster. When she reached the stream, she hurried along the rocky bank until she found a flat spot of ground surrounded by stones, where the water pooled.

She untied her shawl and lifted the infant from it. The child whimpered. The fever that had burned within the baby for days now threatened its life. She knew. She had seen much in her seventy years. She had seen sickness that came to provoke the body, to teach the body to fight, and she had seen sickness that destroyed, that came to steal the life the Creator had given.

But she also knew the God of heaven and earth had provided a way to strike the powers of darkness. In her time with Him, He had revealed His consuming love and mercy and grace. And He had taught her that faith alone gave life to prayers. Making them living things, imbued with the power of the Creator.

She believed. With that faith, with certain knowledge, she knelt and lifted the crying child above her, to heaven. She felt His presence. “If it please You, Lord,” she whispered.

As she surrendered to the Spirit of God, all things of the earth fled from her, and she was but an empty vessel, filled with the Spirit.

And so the prayer of healing was prayed. Not with the words of the old woman but by the groanings of the Spirit, so His will might be done. And in that moment, dead to the flesh, transfigured by faith and the glory of God, there in the desolate field, unseen by the eyes of man, her prayer was answered.

Under the arc of the wings of a legion of angels, amidst the worshipping praise of one accord, the child was made whole.