Where the Fields Keep Secrets
Amish Life. Hidden Truths. Personal Choices.
Step into a world where silence is a virtue and every shadow holds a story. Chet Matterson's acclaimed series explores the complex intersection of faith and freedom, weaving a warm yet mysterious tapestry of the Amish community. Here, the biggest secrets are often kept in plain sight, waiting for the courage of a single choice to bring the truth to light.
Explore the Series
Where the Fields Keep Secrets: A Novel of Lancaster County
Some truths are sown in silence. And only the land remembers.
When tragedy shatters an Amish family in the heart of Lancaster County, long-buried secrets begin to rise—hidden in old journals, whispered across quilts, and unearthed beneath the thawing fields.
Sadie Lapp is caught between two worlds: the faithful Ordnung of her upbringing and the quiet call of a life beyond the fence. As she uncovers her Aunt Miriam’s forbidden past and forges a tender connection with an outsider, Sadie must choose whether to stay rooted in tradition—or risk everything for honesty and change.
Meanwhile, her mother Ruth grieves the sudden death of her husband, trying to hold the family together as tensions grow, and her youngest son struggles to take a man’s place far too soon.
Through births, deaths, letters, and unexpected reckonings, Where the Fields Keep Secrets unfolds as a deeply moving portrait of faith, forgiveness, and the strength it takes to break silence for truth.
Perfect for readers of Suzanne Woods Fisher, Jodi Picoult’s Plain Truth, and The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, this debut novel weaves together generations of love, loss, and quiet courage on the edge of tradition.
Where the Fields Keep Secrets:: The Quilt and the Grave, book 2
In the hush of Lancaster’s fields, secrets whisper louder than sermons.
Sadie Miller knows grief. Since her brother Levi’s tragic death, her quiet days have been marked by mourning and unanswered questions. But when a letter arrives hinting at a long-buried scandal—the death of her cousin Miriam and the mystery of a missing child—Sadie begins a journey that will shake the foundation of her Amish world.
As Mammi begins a memory quilt stitched with symbols of loss and legacy, Ruth wrestles with her role as a new wife, and young Elias uncovers a child’s shoe beneath the barn floorboards. The shadows grow longer around the Bishop’s past, and a stranger arrives who may carry the voice of someone long lost.
From attic secrets to field-side confessions, Sadie must choose between silence and truth, tradition and justice, fear and faith. Along the way, she is judged, shunned, and tested—but never silenced.
Where the Fields Keep Secrets: The Quilt and the Grave is a story of forbidden love, generational silence, and spiritual courage. Rich in detail and woven with reverence for Amish life, this second installment invites readers to uncover what lies beneath stitched fabric and sacred soil.
Where the Fields Keep Secrets – Book 3: A Story of Silence, Memory, and Grace in Amish Country
In the quiet fields of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, silence has roots deeper than memory.
Spring is stirring in the earth, but in one Amish family, old secrets rise with the thaw. When Sadie discovers a red thread stitched into a forgotten quilt square, she unknowingly unravels a story buried for two decades — one of shame, sacrifice, and a love that defied the Ordnung.
Mammi has guarded the truth for years: the name of the child Miriam bore before dying in shame, the identity of the father, and the hidden stitches that told their story in cloth when no words could be spoken. Now, as Ruth prepares for her wedding and Elias uncovers a letter beneath the floorboards, the past refuses to stay buried.
When Samuel — the son Miriam was forced to give away — returns to the community, the family must face the Ordnung, confront long-standing silence, and choose between grace and judgment.
Where the Fields Keep Secrets – Book 3 is a powerful and poetic journey through memory, redemption, and the threads that bind us. Told through a quiet yet resonant lens, this installment concludes the trilogy with emotional honesty, faith, and the hope that even in the most tightly bound quilts, a single loose thread can lead to freedom.
Where the Fields Keep Secrets: Book Four: These Tattered Threads
Where the Fields Keep Secrets: Book Four – These Tattered Threads
A Novel of Lancaster County
In a quiet Pennsylvania valley where quilts hold memories and silence often speaks louder than words, the Lapp family faces its final season of reckoning.
As Ruth prepares for motherhood, Sadie gathers women from across the district to begin a community quilt—one stitched not just with thread, but with truth long buried. Elias, the youngest Lapp sibling, returns from injury with new questions about his place in the church. And Samuel, once shunned, seeks a name that was never fully his to begin with.
Secrets passed down from Miriam Lapp’s hidden journal, a midwife’s long-withheld letter, and the Bishop’s confession unravel the fragile threads of tradition. Together, this community must decide: what is worth preserving, and what must be released for healing to begin?
In this moving conclusion to the Where the Fields Keep Secrets series, the red thread returns—binding sorrow, strength, and generations of women who chose to stay when walking away would have been easier.