Hope Books in Order

Sam Gardner’s story doesn’t end in Harmony. In the Hope novels, Gulley follows his Quaker pastor into the next chapter of his life, after a hard controversy at Harmony Friends Meeting pushes Sam to wonder whether he still belongs in that pulpit.

Hope Friends Meeting, in the nearby town of Hope, Indiana, feels at first like a consolation prize.

The congregation is tiny, the building is beautiful but underused, and the members range from weary elders to stubborn cranks. Sam arrives with his wife and sons, nursing bruises from his old church and trying to decide whether he has the energy to start over.

A Place Called Hope opens with the incident that drives him out of Harmony: Sam agrees to stand in for an ailing Unitarian minister at a wedding, only to discover at the last minute that the couple are two women. The fallout from that decision lays bare the fault lines in his denomination and leaves him facing unemployment just as his family is changing. When a search committee from Hope Friends Meeting calls, offering a new pastorate and a pie‑baking committee that sounds almost like grace, he decides to take the leap.

In A Lesson in Hope, Sam is only a few months into the job when a prickly, ninety‑eight‑year‑old member dies and leaves her small meeting almost a million dollars. The unexpected gift brings out rival visions for the church’s future and draws an angry niece who threatens a lawsuit. Sam spends as much time refereeing arguments and fielding legal threats as he does praying, learning how quickly money can test friendships and the Quaker ideal of unity.

A Gathering in Hope completes the trilogy with a different kind of conflict. The meeting decides to use its windfall to expand the cramped building, only to discover that an endangered colony of Indiana bats has taken up residence in the trees and attic. Environmental rules, anxious neighbors, and one overzealous member’s scheme to solve the bat problem land Sam in the middle of a mess that could easily end in scandal.

Across all three books, the Hope series keeps Gulley’s trademark mix of humor and tenderness. Sam is still surrounded by oddball Friends and local characters, but the questions feel a shade sharper: how do you stay rooted in a tradition that sometimes wounds you, how do you welcome people who upend old habits, and what does integrity look like when you’re leading a very human church?

You can read the Hope novels on their own, but they’re especially satisfying if you’ve already met Sam and his congregation in the Harmony books. Together, the two series trace one pastor’s journey from youthful idealism through disillusionment toward a quieter, riskier kind of hope.