Nora Bell is visiting Ascroft, eh? to tell us about The Secret in the Sampler, the first novel in the Plain Truth mystery series.
Welcome, Nora. Let’s get started, shall we?
Tell us about the novel that you live inside. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about the series too.
I live inside The Secret in the Sampler, the first book in The Plain Truth Mysteries. I admit that “live inside” sounds rather more comfortable than the experience actually is.
At the beginning of the book, I return to Briar Creek, Ohio, after inheriting The Bell & Quill, my late Aunt Lenora’s letterpress and stationery shop. I expect to spend a few weeks sorting invoices, clearing out boxes, and deciding whether the building is worth saving. I also expect a reasonable amount of privacy, which proves that grief has not entirely cured me of optimism.
Instead, I find an old hand-stitched sampler hidden in a cedar trunk, a warning written in my aunt’s handwriting, and evidence that someone has been altering records connected to a respected local family. Before long, an appraiser is dead, an auction record is missing, and several people become remarkably interested in convincing me that certain questions are impolite.
The series continues in Briar Creek, with The Bell & Quill serving as an unofficial receiving desk for troublesome pieces of paper. Wedding invitations, auction ledgers, quilt labels, hymnbooks, cemetery maps, recipe cards, wills, and postcards have an unfortunate habit of arriving with histories their owners would prefer not to discuss.
The mysteries are connected by the belief that ordinary objects remember what people try to forget. Paper can be altered, hidden, misdated, or misrepresented, but it often leaves behind some physical trace of the truth.
There is also Eli Yoder, an Amish widower and auction clerk who understands local families, land boundaries, estate sales, and the significance of silences I initially mistake for evasiveness. Sometimes they are evasiveness. It is important not to become overly generous.
Does the writer control what happens in the story, or do you get a say too?
Abigail B. Hartwell, I call her Abby, would probably insist that she controls the story. Writers like to believe this. It helps them maintain morale.
She decides where the body is found, which document disappears, and how frequently I am required to enter rooms where everyone stops talking the moment they see me. I decide whether I cooperate gracefully.
There are moments when I suspect Abby intends me to remain quiet, sensible, or safely removed from an investigation. Then someone lies badly, uses the wrong paper stock, or treats another person’s suffering as a convenient family secret. At that point, I generally take over.
I do not consider myself reckless. I simply believe that once you notice something is wrong, pretending otherwise becomes a choice. Abigail provides the circumstances. I provide the resistance.
She also keeps placing Eli nearby during emotionally inconvenient moments. I have expressed concerns about this. They have not been addressed.
How did you evolve as the main character?
When I first return to Briar Creek, I tell myself the arrangement is temporary. My husband, Daniel, died suddenly two years earlier, and I have spent much of that time being functional rather than alive. There is a difference, though people are often too polite to mention it.
I come to settle Aunt Lenora’s estate because paperwork is easier than grief. Paper has edges. Ink dries. Boxes can be labeled. Loss is much less cooperative.
At first, The Bell & Quill is merely another obligation left behind by someone I loved. Gradually, it becomes a place where I am useful again. My experience as a graphic designer and art teacher allows me to notice visual inconsistencies other people overlook: uneven lettering, altered dates, lifted labels, mismatched ink, and patterns that have been deliberately turned backward.
More importantly, I begin learning that attention carries responsibility. Finding the truth does not mean I own it. Some secrets must be exposed because they are protecting wrongdoing. Others must be handled carefully because innocent people are still living beneath them.
Over the course of the series, I become more willing to belong somewhere, to trust my own judgment, and to admit that wanting a future is not a betrayal of the life I had with Daniel. I am still cautious. I simply no longer mistake caution for wisdom every time.
Do you have any other characters you like sharing the story with? If so, why are you partial to them?
Eli Yoder is my principal investigative partner, though he would probably object to the word “investigative.” He prefers to describe our activities as asking necessary questions, reviewing records, or happening to be present when other people reveal themselves.
Eli is steady, observant, and sparing with words. This can be comforting or maddening, depending on whether he is withholding the answer I need. He understands Briar Creek in ways I do not. He remembers which families once owned certain farms, which objects appeared at old estate sales, and which grudges have been politely maintained for several generations.
We are both widowed, although our losses shaped us differently. Neither of us tries to force the other to speak about grief before we are ready. Sometimes that restraint creates more intimacy than a conversation would, which is extremely inconvenient.
I am also partial to Maeve Hartley, who owns Hartley House Bed-and-Breakfast. Maeve is aggressively hospitable and has turned the distribution of baked goods into a regional intelligence network. She knows nearly everything happening on the Englisch side of Briar Creek and considers privacy a condition that should be periodically checked for structural weakness.
Deputy Caleb Stover is sensible enough to recognize evidence when it is placed in front of him and patient enough to tolerate my involvement, though not always enthusiastically. Eli’s daughters, Miriam and Katie, also become increasingly important to me. They notice far more than the adults around them assume, which is generally the way of intelligent young women.
Even the late Aunt Lenora remains a character in the series. Her records, private jobs, and quiet interventions continue to shape my life. The more I learn about her, the more I realize that the aunt I thought I knew was only the public version.
What’s the place like where you find yourself in this story?
Briar Creek is a small town in east-central Ohio, close enough to Amish-country tourism that visitors arrive expecting quilts, pies, buggies, and a simplified explanation of everyone they meet.
The actual town is more complicated.
There are working Amish farms and school districts, the Englisch businesses along Main Street, and a tourist corridor where “authentic simplicity” is carefully packaged, priced, and sold under flattering lights. The countryside is beautiful, but it is not decorative. The farms are workplaces. The auctions settle estates, debts, and family histories. The quiet roads carry people whose lives are not exhibits.
The Bell & Quill sits in an old brick storefront in the center of town. It contains a Chandler & Price letterpress, rows of metal type, sample invitations, customer ledgers, old memorial cards, and a back room full of boxes Aunt Lenora apparently intended me to sort until the end of time.
The shop smells of paper dust, old ink, machine oil, cold brick, and occasionally tea I have made and forgotten to drink. People come through the door needing wedding invitations, auction notices, funeral cards, labels, or help identifying an old document.
Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about you and the book?
I am not a detective. I do not carry a magnifying glass, conduct theatrical interrogations, or gather suspects in the drawing room while everyone pretends not to know why they were invited.
I own a letterpress shop.
I notice when paper does not belong to the year written on it. I notice when a person answers a different question from the one I asked. I notice when people use kindness to disguise control and silence to protect reputations rather than human beings.
The Secret in the Sampler is a mystery about inheritance, hidden family history, altered records, and the danger of allowing a respectable lie to harden into accepted truth. It is also about grief, second chances, and the slow discovery that a new life does not erase the old one.
Readers should not expect graphic violence or hurried romance. The mystery unfolds through objects, conversations, community tensions, and the physical evidence left behind by people who believed no one would look closely.
Unfortunately for them, looking closely is one of the few things I have always done well.
Thank you for answering my questions, Nora, and good luck to you and your author, Abigail B Hartwell, with The Secret in the Sampler, the first book in the Plain Truth mystery series.
Readers can learn more about Nora and her author, Abigail B Hartwell by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Instagram and Amazon Author pages.
The novel is available at the following online retailers:
Amazon Book Amazon Series
About Abigail B Hartwell: Abigail writes gentle Amish-adjacent cozy mysteries rooted in the small towns and wooded backroads of east-central Ohio. Though she is not Amish, she lives near Amish communities and draws inspiration from the region’s quiet rhythms, close-knit families, old stories, and rural traditions. She shares a modest home on five wooded acres with her long-haul truck driver husband. They have two grown daughters and three grandchildren. When she is not writing, Abigail enjoys church activities, family time, and the peaceful beauty of the Ohio countryside.
