When I lived in L.A., I was up at four a.m. and went to the gym inside my high rise apartment building. Worked out, grabbed a juice cleanse from my fridge while picking out the sleek and sophisticated outfit that I was going to wear that day, and fed my pug Huckleberry a gourmet meal made by a local chef. Then, I ran out of the building to stand in line for thirty minutes at the closest café for a coffee that was non-fat, non-sugar, and painfully bitter. Followed by sitting in traffic for over an hour before sitting down at my desk at nine a.m.

Now that I’m back home in rural western Michigan, I still wake up by four. However by nine in the morning, I have already watered the gardens, fed the chickens, fed my father breakfast and got him settled for the day, gave Huckleberry his bargain kibble, and repaired the latest broken tractor part. My life in Michigan could not be more different from L.A., but I wouldn’t trade it.

It had always been my dream to come back to my family farm one day to retire and spend my twilight years caring for the farm and living off the land. I had dreams of an organic farm that would teach people about food and where their food came from.

At thirty-eight, I was far from my twilight years. In fact, I was at the height of my career in Hollywood. I was making more true crime documentaries than any other producer in my field. I had heard murmurs of Emmy nominations if I was able to keep going. And then my father called. . .

The farm was in chaos. It was heavily mortgaged, and my father who never had any use for government had not paid his property taxes for years. Not only did he have to pay the back taxes but the fines that had piled up as well. He was unwell and could barely get around the old farmhouse with his cane. Let alone take care of a two hundred acre farm. Dad called and after lifetime of saying he had everything under control, asked for help.

What choice did I have but to go back? I cashed in my savings and my retirement. I was good with money, and it was enough to pay the taxes and the penalties that came along with them. It was not enough to also pay the two large mortgages on the farm. I would have to go back and bring the farm back to life to do that. So I did. I left my high-rise apartment, stellar career, and sleek clothes behind in California and loaded my beloved pug Huckleberry and myself into my red convertible and drove across country. I was intent on saving the farm. I even found an investor who offered me money to help.

I thought this was going to be challenging but doable. I had never backed down from something hard before, and I wasn’t going to start now. I was one hundred percent confident I had this until the investor was murdered and everyone in my tiny Michigan town pointed their fingers at me. . .

Farm to Trouble, A Farm to Table Mystery #1
Genre: Cozy
Release: February 2021
Purchase Link

Shiloh Bellamy cashed in her big city job and 401K to return home to Michigan to save the family farm, but turning Bellamy Farms into a sustainable, organic operation is no small feat. Especially when her new investor is found dead at the farmers market not long after the contract is signed, a contract that the whole town knows her father was wholeheartedly against.

Now, Shiloh must clear her family’s name and track down the real killer before her farm dreams wilt before her very eyes. But with her father trying to stop any progress on his land, her cousin belittling her every effort, and the whole town believing her family at fault, Shiloh has to carry the investigation on her shoulders or risk all her dreams drying up before they begin.

About the Author
Amanda Flower, a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author of over thirty-five cozy mystery novels, started her writing career in elementary school when she read a story she wrote to her sixth grade class and had the class in stitches with her description of being stuck on the top of a Ferris wheel. She knew at that moment she’d found her calling of making people laugh with her words. In addition to being an author, Amanda is a former librarian with fifteen years’ of experience in Northeast Ohio. She and her husband own an old farm that they are slowly bringing back to life. Farm to Trouble is her newest book. You can find her at amandaflower.com and on Facebook.

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