Rachel Van Essen

Rachel writes stories about children learning to do real things with people who love them. She has watched it happen in her own family. A grown-up slows down, a child gets a turn, and before long, "I can't" becomes "Let me do it." Those moments led her to create the Faithful Hands series.

Farming runs through Rachel's family, and she has a soft spot for lessons learned while hands are busy. Sometimes that means unloading the dishwasher, cutting the vegetables for dinner, fixing a fence, planting a tree, or cleaning up a mess you helped make. She writes for families who want faith and character to be part of everyday life, not just something children hear about.

Rachel and her husband, Jerry, also help family businesses get organized so the next generation is not left guessing. That work shapes these books more than you might expect: she has sat with families sorting out what gets passed down, and how much of it is more than property.

They split their time between Minnesota and Texas and have three grown children and eight grandchildren. Rachel has been telling her family's story through yearly photo books for years, and thinks a Rubik's Cube is a perfectly reasonable thing to teach a grandchild.