by After spending three years in the English world, Anna Beiler has come home. She brings with her a baby girl, which will surely cause a stir since Anna is unmarried. She is also hiding secrets: The baby is not hers by birth, nor does Anna intend to stay. Rather, she desperately needs sanctuary from the child’s violent father.It surprises Anna how quickly her Amish habits return to her and how satisfying it feels to reconnect with her father, her sister Leah, and her brother, Joseph. Even Anna’s childhood friend Samuel, whose slow, thoughtful manner used to frustrate her, becomes a fond and reassuring companion. But Anna hasn’t fully faced the consequences of her irresponsible youth, when her behavior led to a tragic accident. And now her mere presence may endanger the family she holds dear. How easy it is to return to the safe and familiar community whose blessings she once took for granted. But if she wants to stay, Anna must seek forgiveness and experience the true change of heart required to make a new beginning.
This is the third book in Perry’s Pleasant Valley Series that picks up the story of Leah’s sister, a story that was told initially along with Leah’s in book one. Anna, a rebellious and flighty and know-it-all teen has opted to exercise her right to rumspringa, a period of life exploration given to teens and young adults by the Amish tradition. Anna decided that she was thoroughly fed up, angry with, and resistant to her family and their old-fashioned, religion-bound ways. And so she spreads her wings, takes up partying, driving, drinking, carousing, and living independently with the family of her then-boyfriend.
Anna’s journey of discovery is slowly revealed in this book as the back story is interwoven in the plot of this tale. She rediscovers her family and their deep acceptance, but now she sees it through the eyes of motherhood because she is now the adoptive mother of little Gracie, the daughter of her best friend and “roomie” in Chicago who died almost immediately after Gracie’s birth from leukemia. But she is hiding from a violent man who now seeks to wrest Gracie from her, a man who is a convicted felon, who signed away his rights to Gracie even before she was born, and who abandoned Gracie’s mother not only during her pregnancy but in the final days of her terminal illness. Needless to say, Anna has experienced life at a level she never anticipated and it has changed the way she now sees her old community. She honestly believes that being so far from Chicago and “hidden” in her Amish village can protect her and Gracie, but she lives in fear that somehow she will have to run again.
This is truly one of the inspirational novels that can warm your heart with its gentle characters, its non-violent and forgiving ways, its family loyalty and kindness under the most trying of circumstances. Anna finds a gentle acceptance and understanding from her friend Samuel who also “jumped the fence” for almost a year in search of his father who decided to leave the Amish community when Samuel was 16 years old. He not only left a way of life but he left a wife and two children. Samuel returned because his mother was dying, but he shares some of the struggles he still must face, doubts about himself, worries about the strength of his faith, and his growing attachment and deepening feeling for Anna.
This is the kind of novel I love to read — I was raised by a Mennonite father and my paternal grandparents were very much in this kind of mindset as the Mennonite community is thought to be “kissing cousins” with the Amish. There is an old saying that claims that ” . . . our grandmothers baked bread together . . . ” if we know there is a connection but we can’t find out exactly what it is. So I can understand the deep desire to be connected to the earth, to be steadfast in their understanding of obedience to the faith, and a desire to be extended family to one another. But Anna is still struggling with the sense of being tied to so many people, of giving up her personal freedom, of worrying about what her life will be like and whether this is the best life for her daughter.
There is just simply not anything in this book that is not to like. Perry brings a wealth of personal background to these books which grows out her own exposure to the Amish tradition during her childhood. She is a writer of note and one that has proven time and again that she can tell a story that is readable, understandable, with a well-developed plot and well-defined characters, using a number of literary devices to fill in the blanks for the reader. All in all, this is a book I plan on giving to my teen granddaughters and urging them to enjoy and learn. This book is an example of what a romantic, in-depth study in human nature looks like while entertaining and uplifting the reader.
I give this book a rating of 5 out of 5.
The Series:
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