When
the Heart Cries
By Cindy Woodsmall
$9.99
Waterbrook Press
When Hannah dares to love across the boundaries of tradition,
will she lose everything?
Despite being raised in a traditional Old Order Amish family,
seventeen-year-old Hannah Lapp desires to break with custom, forgo
baptism into the faith, and marry outside the cloistered
community. She’s been in love with Mennonite Paul Waddell for
three years, and before returning to college for his senior year,
Paul asks Hannah to be his wife. Hannah accepts, aware that her
marriage will change her relationship with her family forever.
On the evening of their engagement, tragedy strikes and in one
unwelcome encounter, all that Hannah has known and believed is
destroyed. As she finds herself entangled in questions that the
Old Ways of her people cannot answer, Hannah faces the possibility
of losing her place in her family, in her community–and in the
heart of the man she loves.
|
Patti's
Two-Cents |
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Cindy Woodsmall delivers up one of the best debut novels
I've read. Her extensive research is evident in her characters and
their daily lives. Her portrayal of the Amish is so well done I felt
transported back in time, but then a moment of modernity would enter
Hannah's world and stand out in stark contrast.
At the beginning of the book, Hannah Lapp accepts the
marriage proposal of her childhood friend, Paul Waddell. But Paul is a
Mennonite--and, almost worse, a college man. He embraces such corrupt
modernisms as gasoline engines and the Internet. To outsiders, the
differences between Amish and Mennonites may seem subtle, but that's not
the case for Hannah's Old Order father, to whom this is not acceptable.
Let's hope a sequel follows soon!
*Book Bargains & Preview Rating is
based on Five Stars.
