Instead, while raising three daughters in an urban setting, she discovered writing after an intriguing dream that begged to be developed into a novel. Several new stories followed, all gathering a collection of rejection slips. Years later she moved from Indiana to Tennessee and eventually became an editor with Abingdon Press, where she worked for twelve years before founding her own small press, Sheaf House Publishers. In 2012 she and her husband moved back to Indiana.
In addition to the critically acclaimed American Patriot Series, Joan coauthored the Northkill Amish Series with multi-published author Bob Hostetler. Book 1, Northkill, won Foreword Magazine’s 2014 Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, received Interviews and Reviews’ 2017 Silver Award for historical fiction and Shelf Unbound’s Notable Indie Award. Joan is also the author of One Holy Night, a retelling of the Christmas story set in modern times that was the 2009 Christian Small Publishers Fiction Book of the Year and a finalist for the 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award.
Joan is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, the Jacob Hochstetler Family Association, and Daughters of the American Revolution. She loves to garden, scrapbook, redecorate her home, travel, spend time with her grandchildren, and most of all read good stories and write. She and her husband, a retired pastor with the United Methodist Church, live at the center of Amish country in Elkhart, Indiana, and attend Brenneman Memorial Missionary Church.
