Book Review: The Amish Newcomer

 As a 50-odd year old male, I have never once in my life read, purchased, perused, or otherwise been involved in a romance novel.  At best, the pictures I have of them is commercials from my youth with titles (and illustrations) that seemed to suggest situations and storylines that I never really had an interest in.  I carried on happily in my life with a steady of diet of history, theology, novels, and Fantasy and Science Fiction.

That is, until Patrice Lewis at Rural Revolution announced she was publishing a book through Harlequin Romance's Inspirational Romance series.

I have followed Patrice, her husband Don, and their two children (Older Daughter and Younger Daughter) for several years (her children were being home schooled when I started and Younger Daughter is two years into a naval career) as they have lived and worked at a home business and off the grid.  She writes for her blog and well as for other online venues (World Net Daily, for example, and Lehman's) and has been quite free in giving us an insight into what an effort the "simple life" actual is.

You support people doing good things.  So, after 50 years,  I bought a Harlequin Romance:

Leah Porte, a television reporter that witnessed a murder, has been placed into a Witness Protection Program amongst the Amish.  The book follows Leah as she begins to integrate into the life and flow of "The Plain People" and the family she is with, Ivan and Edith Byler and their six children, and the larger Amish Community.  Also in the picture is Isaac Sommer, bachelor and helper of Ivan in his woodshop as well as burgeoning magazine publisher about the rural life. The books covers Leah as she fights three battles: an outer battle as she learns to fit into a lifestyle that is very different from the one she has known, an inner battle as she begins to confront the idea of a personal God and how He might be involved in her life, and an emotional battle as she realizes she may be falling in love with a man who lives in a different world than she does.

The book in and of itself is a lovely introduction to the world of the Amish.  The conversations are peppered just enough with Pennsylvania Dutch German to give the idea of a culture that is almost familiar but not quite. It is also a wonderful introduction (with enough detail) of the aspects of living a life as it is (I imagine) lived among the Amish: large gardens and preserving their output, doing laundry, handling daily milk, even aspects of a social interactions between individuals and groups.  It is convincing enough (to me) that at some level, this must be what that life is like.

It is also peppered with thought provoking statements which, while I am pretty sure underlie the Amish beliefs and practice of life, also underlie what Patrice has done and wrestled with in her own life, not just by writing but by doing:

"Then you were lying when you said you were interested in green and sustainable living.  A zero-waste lifestyle.  You say you support those things, yet you disdain the skills that make that kind of lifestyle possible.  If those things are important to you, then you should be willing and able to preach it to others."

"But you're busy on your own schedules, doing whatever needs doing rather than working by anyone else's schedule, such as working for a boss.  I kind of like that idea."

"I found it easier to maintain my beliefs by living them, not fighting to keep them while living among people who don't share those beliefs."

"But work is an honor.  Labor is a gift.  It's not something to avoid, but something to embrace.  That way, rest is sweeter."

""For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" quoted Isaac.  "I can't save the whole world.  That's Gott's job, not mine.  My job is to save my own soul, and perhaps influence the souls around me.  I'm a simple man, so the only way I could figure out how to save my own soul was to return to my roots.""

"Who can say?  But I think faith seldom comes in a blinding road-to-Damascus flash.  It takes time, and it takes practice.  And like anything worth mastering - carpentry or sewing or milking a cow or working on a computer - it is something that takes a lot of time and the chance to mess up without the fear of someone mocking your efforts.  Sometimes it takes patient teachers, and sometimes it's something you wrestle with in private. Everyone's journey is different."

I am not going tell you the ending (you will have to read it yourself and find out), but it is satisfying and left me saying "And then what?", which is the sign of a good book.

At less than $5 - the cost of two/thirds of a movie or most books these days - you will get some hours of being lost in a world which is almost, but not like the one we live now.  I look forward to Patrice's further novels.  

I sure hope we pick up where we left off with this one...

(A simple request, and against my usual grain:  If you are going to buy the book, do it through the regular commercial outlets.  That makes sure that Patrice gets the money.)