In Brief: To Every Season

By Nancy Learned Haines. Self-published, 2024. 264 pages. $16.99/paperback; $5.99/eBook.

Haines grips the reader from the beginning by opening the novel with the protagonist staring at a gallows on which participants in a rebellion against a corrupt colonial government will be hanged. Based on actual events, this fictional account of Quaker Mary Jackson explores the protagonist’s competing moral commitments as well as her doubts about providential care in the face of crop failure exacerbated by onerous taxes the British Crown exacted from colonists in the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War.

The author’s scene-setting and description of Jackson’s relocation from Pennsylvania to North Carolina with her husband and children engages the reader and offers insights into the character’s thoughts and motivations. The novel situates characters in their historical context without ponderous exposition.

Mary Jackson and her husband, Isaac, face excruciating moral choices as they try to adhere to their Quaker principles when the Revolutionary War breaks out:

“It’s not our work to participate in setting up or putting down kings and government. We must stay faithful to our principles. As I have been saying, we must remain a people apart.” Mary worried. How could they stand firm in their principles when there were so few of them, and the talk to take sides was so relentless? She knew God wouldn’t abandon them, but she felt so alone in the work she was called to do.

Friends curious about colonial-era Quakers in what would become the United States, as well as readers interested in moral challenges to pacifism, will find this novel a captivating read.

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Sharlee DiMenichi is a staff writer for Friends Journal. Contact: sharlee@friendsjournal.org.