Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Love Comes Softly
    Love Comes Softly
    Love Comes Softly
    Audiobook7 hours

    Love Comes Softly

    Written by Janette Oke

    Narrated by Ruth Ann Phimister

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A Compelling Love Story Set in the "Little House on the Prairie" Era

    She ventured west with the man she loved, but in one day her whole world had crumbled around her …

    Nineteen-year-old Marty Claridge starts west with her adventurous, boyish husband, Clem, seeking to claim land and hoping for good fortune. But when the venture turns suddenly to tragedy, Marty is left alone with her great loss. And coupled with her grief and heartache is the grim reality that there is no way to return home.

    Clark Davis and his little girl, Missie, are also in great need. Clark's wife has died, leaving him to care to Missie and the farm at the same time. His offer to Marty comes with good intention, but will courage and faith be enough to bring them to true love?

    First introduced in 1979, Love Comes Softly has become a beloved classic in the inspirational fiction category. A generation of readers has laughed and wept and rejoiced with Marty and Clark Davis whose tragic circumstances threw them together on the frontier prairies of the 1800s.

    Winner of the Gold Book Award

    Love Comes Softly was transformed into an award-winning Hallmark Channel Original Movie.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 6, 2008
    ISBN9781436112031
    Love Comes Softly
    Author

    Janette Oke

    Bestselling author Janette Oke is celebrated for her significant contribution to the Christian book industry. Her novels have sold more than 30 million copies, and she is the recipient of the ECPA President's Award, the CBA Life Impact Award, the Gold Medallion, and the Christy Award. Janette and her husband, Edward, live in Alberta, Canada.

    More audiobooks from Janette Oke

    Related to Love Comes Softly

    Titles in the series (3)

    View More
    View More

    Related audiobooks

    Christian Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Summer Reading Guide

      Jan 2, 2022

      Summer Reading Guide
      6 min read

    • Article

      Ursula K. Le Guin

      Jun 15, 2018

      He was thinking of Lookfar, abandoned long ago, beached on the sands of Selidor. Little of her would be left by now, a plank or two down in the sand maybe, a bit of driftwood on the western sea. As he drifted near sleep he began to remember sailing t

      15 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading Special

      Dec 28, 2023

      The distinctive depth of characterisation shines in this tightly knitted story of therapist Nick and retired solicitor wife Zoe, as they decide to view a deconsecrated Victorian church which is for sale. It’s “even more picturesque than it looked onl

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Black Spider

      Nov 28, 2019

      The Black Spider
      22 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      I’m looking at a photograph of a bearded Romaine Tenney on his hay mowerhitched to draft horses in a half-cut field. Tenney, whose Vermont farm was slatedto be swallowed by Interstate 91, immolated himself, rather than be forciblymoved. My son says,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading Special

      Dec 28, 2023

      Summer Reading Special
      11 min read

    • Article

      On The Shelf

      Nov 23, 2020

      On The Shelf
      2 min read

    • Article

      As the World Collapses

      Jul 27, 2017

      As the World Collapses
      7 min read

    • Article

      Left To Lose

      Jul 10, 2022

      Around the time she gives up her name, it starts to feel like this entire revolution isn’t worth it anymore. The world is probably lucky that Kelian—she still remembers Kelian, in spite of everything—is there to pick up the pieces, the way he always

      11 min read

    • Article

      This One So Loved

      May 9, 2019

      This One So Loved
      9 min read

    • Article

      Ashes To Ashes…

      Nov 3, 2022

      Ashes To Ashes…
      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      For Sudeep Sen I know how grateful you were for myconfession. I, too, had been trusted, I, too,desired, and felt the other mess of need,the clumsy psychology of powerand uselessness. I, too, had betrayed,had confessed, had faced her wailrushing down

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Dancing Skinny

      Jul 11, 2019

      The Dancing Skinny
      12 min read

    • Article

      Notes From The Isles

      Apr 14, 2023

      Yet again nemesis has smothered my hubris. Having boasted of my expertise in getting the car up our steep, icy track, I awoke to find myself snowed in, near the top of a glacier, totally cut off from all traffic. A nephew and his wife, who were comin

      4 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      Books Only a Mother Could Love

      May 10, 2019

      Books Only a Mother Could Love
      5 min read

    • Article

      Hot Right Now!

      Aug 10, 2023

      Do you want a page-turner to grip you this season? Well, we might just have the one for you… If you could go back, knowing what happens after you die, everything that spirals after that one moment, would you change the course of history? Or would you

      2 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      May 25, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      THE Reading room

      Mar 25, 2020

      THE Reading room
      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Mar 22, 2023

      Great Read
      8 min read

    • Article

      Old Hens On Safari

      Jan 27, 2023

      Old Hens On Safari
      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2023

      Unlike the churning shit-show-roar of whateverthat was we just left behind, this year, onlinechatter tells me, will be one of contemplationand hope. Maybe. Right now, I’m holding stillthe best I can, having followed once again thissame path to this s

      4 min read

    • Article

      An ocean OF LOVE

      Jun 27, 2023

      An ocean OF LOVE
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Love Comes Softly

    4.5/5

    86 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      The book was amazing, but the audio wasn’t that great. I could hear her smacking her lips in between breaths and everything.
    • 5/5
      This book was a great book,it was full of romance and adventure and I can't wait to read the next book in the series.
    • 5/5
      I read this series growing up, and have loved listening to this while nursing my baby girl!
    • 5/5
      Such a wonderful parable of the Heavenly Fathers love for his bride.
    • 5/5
      Janette Oke did an amazing job on this book. This is probably my favorite book. I read it about once a year. It is heart-felt and hard to put down. I love it! It's funny, moving and shares the gospel.
    • 5/5
      The book is excellent with only one flaw that I see: the dialect. Makes reading more difficult.
    • 4/5
      I wasn't sure how I'd like this book, but I pretty much loved it! I thought it was better than the movie, which is only about 50% the same. The only thing I didn't like was the awful hick dialect almost everyone speaks. It made everyone sound extremely uneducated. (Was that intentional?)

      Any other faults this book has may be due to its being the author's first novel. One example is Marty making a jumper for little Missie, which is very historically inaccurate.
    • 5/5
      Janette Oke does a splendid job portraying the life of a frontier family, and the role that women had during this time period. Marty's stubborness and anger fade away to determination and love. Marti succumbs to what God has placed before her and to God himself.
    • 4/5
      A lovely frontier story with an interesting plot. A young woman heading west in a wagon train becomes a widow after her husband accidentally dies. A widower with a small child proposes a marriage of convenience--she cares for his child and he provides her with the protection and home she needs until the next wagon train going east comes in the spring. We then follow their first difficult year of marriage as Love Comes Softly. Woven into the story is Clark's faith as he shares it with Marty and she slowly accepts it.
    • 5/5
      I first read Love Comes Softly when I was only about 15 or 16 years old, and if memory serves, it was my very first romance novel. It seems I must have picked well, because not only is it an appropriate story for younger readers content-wise, but it has stood up to the test of time. I still enjoyed it every bit as much today as I did 25 years ago, perhaps even more because I'm seeing it through more mature eyes. Love Comes Softly is something of a Little House on the Prairie story aimed at a slightly older audience. Janette Oke captures that same spirit of the pioneers, depicting their day-to-day lives in a way that made me feel like I was there with them. It amazes me how hard-working and courageous these people were. Ms. Oke paints a picture of joys and sorrow, hardships and laughter against the backdrop of the frontier where close-knit communities of people existed who were willing to help each other in any way they could. She also really brings home the harsh reality for people in that time period, especially women, and how few choices they had. Marty would have been in unbelievably dire straits, and could possibly have even died, if Clark, a stranger to her, hadn't proposed a marriage of convenience. Under the circumstances, it couldn't have been an easy thing for him to do either, but he needed her almost as much as she needed him, even though she didn't want to admit it.The vast majority (probably more than 95%) of the story is told from Marty's third-person point of view. Marty was a great female lead, but she was also a character who had to slowly grow on me. The author did a wonderful job of palpably expressing Marty's grief over the loss of her first husband. Then Clark came along immediately after her husband's funeral with his proposal. After some thought, Marty, being a practical woman, realized that she really had no other choice, but it didn't stop her from stubbornly resenting Clark for it. Although Marty never gave voice to her angry thoughts in Clark's presence, the reader is certainly privy to them. There were times when I felt like she was being ungrateful for this man taking her in and treating her with kindness and respect, and that she was rather selfish in not even considering the fact that he too might still be grieving the loss of his wife. In her defense though, I carefully considered what it would be like to be in her shoes, and decided that she was for the most part simply having a fairly normal human reaction to being placed in such an untenable position. During these times, I wish that a little more background information had been given about Marty so that I could better understand her reluctance to be beholden to a man, her being suspicious about Clark's kindness, and her inability to perform some of the simplest household tasks. I did admire her determination to uphold her end of the bargain (one way in which her stubbornness served her well), her willingness to learn, and that she always tried her best even when it didn't turn out right. Marty's initial ineptness at cooking and doing household chores could be pretty funny at times. As I continued to read, I realized that the story was really all about Marty's journey back to wholeness and being able to open her heart to love again, and I really enjoyed watching her learn, and change, and most of all grow as a person.There is a part of me that wishes we could have had a little more insight from Clark's point of view. There were only a handful of times in the entire book where we get to see things from his perspective, and they only last for a couple of paragraphs. However, I think that the author meant for the reader to experience Clark through his actions, and the message that actions speak louder than words came across very clearly through his character. Clark was an incredibly kind and gentle man. He only asked for a mutually beneficial marriage in name only, and even offered Marty an out if she chose to take it. He gave her the space she needed to grieve the loss of her husband. He was never mean or demanding like she expected, but instead treated her with respect and patience when she burned dinner or made a mess of her attempts at cleaning. He even ate pancakes every meal for several days without complaint, and helped with some of the cooking and other chores until Marty got her feet under her. Clark was always caring, thoughtful and understanding, especially after he found out that Marty was expecting. He was an amazing father to Missie, and later, to Marty's child as well. Even Marty realized that Clark always did what was right and best for others, even if it hurt him to do it. I think that the best thing about Clark though was how he quietly “lived” his faith in God through example. He never, ever used it to beat Marty over the head. He just accepted her as she was. It would have been impossible not to love a romantic hero like Clark, and slowly but surely his love (as well as God's love) stole into Marty's heart softly and unexpectedly.There were a couple of other elements in Love Comes Softly that really drew me in. First was the marriage of convenience which I haven't really read much of in romance before, and I guess had never really thought much about either. After reading this book, I am quite curious to try more romances with this theme. The other was simply the underlying Christian message of the story which I found to be utterly inspiring. I've been very reluctant to read inspirational romances lately because of the preachiness I often find in them, but Love Comes Softly was a truly uplifting novel that brought me back to some simple spiritual truths that had somehow gotten lost in the busy hustle and bustle of everyday life. For that reason alone, I am so grateful that I decided to re-read this book. In fact, the one and only small problem I had with the story was the author's use of backwoodsy vernacular that seemed a little extreme even for the frontier. In my opinion, it made the characters seem somewhat unintelligent which they clearly weren't. Overall though, it was a minor issue, and otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the book. Love Comes Softly is the first volume in the series of the same name. I can't recall how many of the books I read as a teen, but since the latter three were published several years later, I know that I never made it past #5. This all makes me very eager to revisit/discover the rest of the series soon.
    • 5/5
      This is a quick read, not precisely a page-turner, but a nice way to end the day. The first book is largely about the main character's process of overcoming grief and coping with the consequences of the loss of her husband. Such a topic naturally runs the risk of becoming a sob story, and while you should certainly keep the tissue nearby, the author is not heavy-handed with the grief. I thought she captured the experience quite accurately, and also has provided a well-thought-out character from whom we might find inspiration for our own difficult experiences. I would recommend this for anyone looking for something inspirational and easy to read, or anyone grieving the loss of a loved one. I think it might be especially interesting to someone looking for an unusual love story that's different from your typical romance.