Terry Trafton 
Yellow Wood 

Autumns in Southern Indiana blaze with vibrant colors and nowhere are they bolder and more spectacular than across the rolling hillsides around Jasper and Huntingburg in an area known as Yellow Wood. Against this fiery backdrop of fall colors begins an enchanting and unusual love story that puts conscience and faith in conflict. Physician and amateur photographer, 35-year-old Aaron Fain is obsessed with a beautiful Amish woman who has the uncanny ability to see things before they happen. When Aaron looks at the photographs he took of Emily Yoder, he is shocked by what he sees. Immersed in an eerie white light as she stares into the camera lens, in her eyes are images that are not only fascinating but also inexplicably frightening.In the seductive heat of a sweltering Midwestern summer overwhelming passions push their relationship beyond the boundaries of propriety. Fear of having to choose between her love for Aaron and her devotion to Amish customs and obligations weighs heavily on Emily’s conscience. Captivated by the simplicity and innocence of the Amish, Fain ‘s perceptions of the culture, despite his efforts toward a deeper understanding, remain idealized and superficial. One evening at sunset while sitting uneasily in a sparsely-furnished Amish living room, Fain sees a cloth doll without a face, without hands and arms, propped against the back of a stiff wooden chair. He immediately realizes that Emily has knowingly revealed aspects of her life that would shatter his romanticized perceptions. It is this harsh reality that causes a disenchanted Aaron Fain to turn away in disappointment. Susan Adams has returned to Jasper after a recent divorce, and it is to her that Aaron reveals a conscience darkened by guilt and anguish. Late on a summer night a slender shape on the stone pathway in Fain’s garden, her arms reach for Aaron as she tells him she wants to hear one last time her name on his lips, and that he must once again proclaim his love for her before the night sky changes forever. It is then that Fain understands the mystery that is Emily Yoder. Above them in the stone-cold blackness that is space, a new star blinks icy white and no longer is the vain Cassiopeia the reigning queen in the starry sky.Yellow Wood is a sensitive and magical love story about a materialistic starry-eyed doctor and an enigmatic Amish woman who has a profound knowledge of the stars and a mysterious alliance with the Lyra constellation. Set in the Amish Triangle of Southern Indiana, the story with its paranormal overtones reveals the tenuous and fragile nature of relationships and is guaranteed to keep the reader’s attention from beginning to end.