When the Heart Cries
Book 1 in the Sisters of the Quilt Amish Series
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.
When the Heart Cries is book one in the Sisters of the Quilt series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this debut inspirational novel, Woodsmall takes readers inside a contemporary Amish family where the eldest daughter, Hannah, has fallen in love with her neighbor Paul. The trouble is that he's a Mennonite, and if those two faiths look similar to outsiders, they don't to Hannah's father, who would never permit his daughter to marry outside the Amish community. Yes, this is a familiar setup, with shades of the movie Witness. But the star-crossed romance is only the backdrop to the central events of the novel: in the very first chapter, Hannah experiences a trauma, setting in motion a chain of events that sometimes seems incredible. Woodsmall's prose is undistinguished; she too often flatly describes emotions ("Disappointment and anger formed a knot in Luke's chest"), and the Pennsylvania Dutch sprinkled throughout the book can be distracting. Still, this novel shows potential. Most of the characters are likable, and Woodsmall depicts both the appeal and the potential myopia of secluded Amish life. An emotionally subtle subplot involving Hannah's younger sister's envy adds some depth. Better yet, the surprising conclusion sets Woodsmall up for a sequel but she'll need some fine-tuning if she wants a truly lasting series.
