The Heritage of Lancaster County #1
By Beverly Lewis
Genres: Romance, Religious Fiction, Amish Fiction, Gentle Reads.
Publication date: 1997
Pages: 283
ISBN: 978-1556618666
Geographical Setting: Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; an insular Amish community in the country called Hickory Hollow.
Time Period: Unspecified, but probably set sometime in the last thirty years. The Amish community setting makes the time period feel more like the mid 1800s in terms of technology and mannerisms.
Series: The Heritage of Lancaster County Trilogy. This is the first book in the series, and is followed by The Confession and The Reckoning.
Plot Summary: Katie Lapp is a 22 year old woman living in an Amish community who has always felt somewhat at odds with the Amish ways of life. She finds the Amish standards dictating her place in society to be stifling and has a secret love of music (which is strictly forbidden). Katie shared this love of music with her first love, an Amish man named Daniel Fisher, until he drowned tragically at sea. Since then Katie has tried to stamp out this passion for music in order to fit into her community and prepare for her upcoming marriage to the local minister John Beiler. However, her attempts to fit in are made more difficult when she discovers a mysterious satin baby dress in the attic that causes a rift between Katie and her mother and casts Katie's whole identity into question. Katie struggles with questions of identity, loyalty, and love in this coming-of-age story of self-discovery.
Subject Headings: Amish fiction, Lancaster County, Amish women, Shunning
Appeals:
- Pacing: leisurely
- Tone: comforting, rustic
- Writing Style: descriptive, reflective, simple
Read-a-likes:
The Covenant by Beverly Lewis - Lewis is one of the most popular and esteemed writers of Amish fiction and romance, and the first book in the Abram's Daughters series is likely to scratch the same itch as The Shunning. It follows an Amish girl who falls in love with an "English" (non-Amish) boy and has similar themes of questioning and self-identity within a traditionally rigid Amish setting.Circle of Grace by Penelope J. Stokes - A group of female friends from college decides to keep in touch by writing a collaborative journal that is passed from one to the next. One of the women is diagnosed with terminal cancer and organizes to meet up with her friends in person one last time. She suffers a crisis of faith and identity when she learns that not all of her friends have been entirely truthful in their accounts of their lives in the journal.
The Mistress of Tall Acre by Laura Frantz - This historical tale of Christian romance follows a woman who marries an army general from the American Revolution. She faces difficult decisions when another woman from her new husband's past arrives and casts her role into doubt. A compelling and fast-paced book with complex characters.
Similar authors:
- Francine Rivers
- Cindy Woodsmall
- Amy Clipston
Hello Sam! Nice review.These types of titles are really popular at my library. I read an Amish based tale for my romance annotation as well, "Amish Sweethearts". I don't know about you but these types of works are definitely not my style. However, since they're popular with my patrons I'll need to read enough titles to be to be knowledgeable with the genre.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't even thought that Amish based romance tales would even be a common occurrence, yet there are two of you who did their annotations on them! Are they a more common theme then I am picturing or is it just coincidence that you both read them? I also read a romance book for my annotation this week, which is definitely not my main genre of interest, but it sounds vastly different than these types of romances. Just goes to show who wide the genre really is!
DeleteSam, what did you think of your book personally? Were you a fan, or is this a read that was more of a "good learning opportunity"?
Amish romances are HUGE! I live in a small conservative christian community and we can't keep enough of them on the shelves. We have hundreds, if not thousands of them.
DeleteYeah, Amish Romances are incredibly popular around where I live so I felt it was my duty to get to know the genre a little bit. Personally, I really didn't care for the book. Its pacing is quite slow, the writing style is nothing to get excited about, and it read like a soap opera (a secret adoption, a dramatic wedding gone wrong, a long dead true love who's actually not dead). Also, there's this weird implication by the author that the Amish are genetically predisposed to dislike music and other apparently non-Amish things.
DeleteOne thing I didn't realize going into reading this is that it's only the first book in a trilogy, and the romance is stretched over the entire trilogy. This first book only gets as far as setting up the unrequited love story between the main character and her secretly-not-dead-at-all lover, and the ending of the book is where it's teased that the lover is actually alive (if you weren't able to see that twist coming since chapter two). This means that "The Shunning" by itself doesn't actually follow a traditional romance story arc, but it still has some things in common with other romances. I'm afraid I was not sufficiently captivated to keep reading the series and read the happily ever after for the main character.
Excellent annotation! Full points!
ReplyDelete