Whate'er Betide

About the Book

Millie was a city girl,  who had become used to nice things, but she always planned on becoming a missionary to China.  While working in Philadelphia, she was acquiring skills so that she could move to Chicago and work while attending Moody Bible Institute to prepare for mission work.  But then she met Sam, a senior seminarian, who was looking for someone to marry,  before he headed out for his first call.  She wondered if she could serve the Lord just as well by going with Sam to the frontier town of Jordan, Montana.  So, in 1930, in the middle of a severe drought and at the start of the Great Depression, she married Sam and left for Montana.

Whenever Millie became afraid she hummed Be not dismayed whate'er betide.  God will take care of you.  She hummed it when she had pheumonia, when caught in a sandstorm and a blizzard, and when they left Jordan because of a family emergancy and went back East, and then couldn't find a call, and returned to Jordan only to find that they had already hired another minister.  But she was never sure that God would see them through.

Then she hummed the song again while unpacking in the new manse in Carson, North Dakota and she knew that God would take care of them, no matter what.

About the Author

Esther Allen Peterson is the author of Frederick's Alligator and Penelope Gets Wheels, published by Crown Publishers.  She won a Christopher Award for Frederick's Alligator which was also reprinted by Weekly Reader Book Club and Scholastic Press.  It was also included in Ginn & Co.'s second grade reader.  Penelope Gets Wheels was included in Houghten Mifflin and Heath readers.

Her journal What's the Matter With Christy, using the pen name of Ruth Allen, was published by Bethany House Publishers.

The Spy Machine, a first chapter book for lower grades, was published by Augsburg Press.

A Child's Life of Christ was publshed by Winston-Derik

The ongoing series, for both young adults and adults, about Norwegian homesteaders in the Red River Valley of North Dakota from 1867-1873 is being published by Royal Fireworks Press.  A Long Journey to a New Home was published in 2006 and the second book, Will Spring Come is due for release in 2007.  The third book, The Homesteaders is at the publishers and the fourth book, Coming of Age  is a work in progess.

Whate'er Betide is a novel based on two and a half years of her mother's life.  She is considering a sequal, but that would be mostly fiction.

She has also written non-fiction and fiction for numerous magazines and newspapers.

Esther does public speaking and lives on a lake in Minnesota with her husband Don.  They have fourteen grandchildren and and fourteen great-grandchildren.