I would not normally have picked up this book. It sounds too much like a trashy romance. Luckily I was drawn in by the Amish angle and the book proved to be anything but trashy or stereotypical.
Hannah Hilty is a young Amish woman who flirted with a non-Amish man during her rumspringa. She ends the relationship when she decides to return to the community to be baptised only to have the man stalk her. The fear and violation he causes forces her family to relocate with her to a new and smaller Amish community.
Dealing with the resentment of her younger siblings, the difficulties of her parents and her own demons, Hannah struggles to make a new life for herself in Kentucky.
I loved this book. It was a unique combination of psychological thriller, a love story and tribute to the beauty of the Amish community. I know it sounds like this has been done before (Witness) but it is the gentleness of the writing – told entirely from the perspective of members of the Amish community which makes it different. The twists and turns in the story are unpredictable and thoroughly satisfying.
Apparently it is one of a series – I will have to hunt the others down.
