Nicole Baart Books In Order

Publication Order of Threads Of Change / Julia DeSmit Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Nicole Baart is an American author of fiction. She is known for her fictional series about main character Julia DeSmit. The series has three novels which start with the debut of After the Leaves Fall, which was published in 2007. It was quickly followed up by the 2008 sequel Summer Snow and three years later, the third book, Beneath the Night Tree.

Baart lives in Iowa in a small town. She is the proud mother of three young sons that keep her busy. Her second son is not biological but was adopted from Ethiopia. Nicole found a passion for global issues and was inspired to create and co-found her non-profit organization called One Body One Hope. One of the things that her nonprofit does is work with a church and orphanage in Monrovia in Liberia.

Nicole Baart is an accomplished novelist in her own right. In 2009, she won a Christy Award finalist spot for her writing. She is not only the author of the Julia DeSmit series but the author of several stand-alone novels in the fiction genre. Baart is the author of the 2009 novel The Moment Between. She is also the author of the 2012 novel Far From Here. She has followed this up with Sleeping in Eden, The Beautiful Daughters in 2015, and Little Broken Things in 2017.

After the Leaves Fall is the first book in the Julia DeSmit series. The main character is Julia, a spirited young woman who cannot wait for her life to start. She has a tragic backstory as her mother left her when she was young. At just nine years of age, Julia has to start figuring out how she is going to navigate life without the presence of the one person who is supposed to stick around and love you no matter what. Instead, Julia’s mom just waltzed out the door and decided to live somewhere else and that place apparently was preferable to spending time sticking around and raising her daughter.

Julia does have a lot of feelings about her mother leaving and it always has seemed like that is the central focus of her life. But even though she doesn’t have her real mom in her life, Julia does have some people in her life raising her that truly care about her. Her father didn’t leave when her mother did, and she has been raised by her gentle father and her saintly grandmother for most of her life. Her father is unassuming and deals with the departure of his partner quite well.

But Julia is not destined to have the presence of her father and her grandmother in her life forever. At some point, things change and Julia is stunned when her father dies. She is in the process of becoming a young adult and not only that but a young lady. All of a sudden Julia is without her mother, which she has gotten used to, and she has now lost her father as well. It seems like everyone she loves and cares about leaves without saying goodbye, and this is a lot for Julia to handle.

It just doesn’t seem fair to her that someone who is going from teenager to womanhood has to do so without any parents to guide her at all. Julia DeSmit doesn’t have a mother to teach her how to put on makeup or a father anymore to drive her back from college. She wants to find a new life and a new identity when she goes to college and forget about the horrible circumstances that had made her so jaded. It seems like going to classes and living the college life is the perfect opportunity to try and start over. Time to hit the reset button, Julia thinks.

But when she makes a huge mistake, it might be a slipup that changes the course of her entire life. Julia doesn’t know what to do and can’t consult her parents about it. She doesn’t even know where her mother is. So she does the only thing she can do; go home to her grandmother’s farm and try to process what has happened. Julia is depressed and she is convinced that she is worthless and has nothing to offer the world. Instead of her being motherless defining her, now she has her depression and her mistake to define her.

But it’s a good thing that she has her grandmother, who loves her no matter what. It is through her gentle encouragement and her love that Julia starts to be able to accept what her childhood and what she went through did to her life. Inspired and uplifted once more, Julia looks for hope in God and her religion. If He can make all things new, maybe he can make her new too. Can God make Julia new once more? Pick up After the Leaves Fall to find out!

The sequel to the Julia DeSmit series is titled Summer Snow. It was published in 2008. Julia has finally started to transition to her new life. Even though she did technically drop out of college, she is looking forward to being able to start over again. She is carefully taking slow steps down a road that might be challenging but also offers hope for more. Julia is leading a more careful life than ever, but is what she is building destined to be dashed to pieces when someone she never expected to see materializes out of the blue and without a single warning?

Julia’s mother is back, after all this time. She just shows up on a cold March night on the front porch of Julia’s home after ten years of not speaking. Janice has been gone for a decade, and in that time her daughter has built up a lot of resentment and anger. She doesn’t even know what to do with the sudden appearance of her mother and Julia is soon faced with a choice that is impossible. Can what be broken be mended or is all lost beyond repair? Julia may have more to hope for than she thinks. Can she find grace in her relationship with her mother? Read this book to find out!