A Love Undone

A husband and son abandoned to forge a path alone.
A young woman who sacrificed her dreams.
How will the God of grace and hope help them find their way?
At nineteen years old, Old Order Amish Jolene Keim was on the brink of happily-ever-after when everything changed, stealing the future she expected and burdening her with an unbearable decision. For the next ten years, Jolene throws herself into family life—and then she meets Andy Fisher. The horse trainer and father to a sweet nine year-old challenges her and holds up a mirror to issues Jolene has been unwilling to face.

Andy is cautious about his deepening friendship with Jolene, but he believes she knows the truth about him – that he is a grass widower. As a man whose wife has abandoned him six years past, he is unable to divorce or remarry according to the Amish ways. Andy has wrestled with God concerning his reality, and he had found peace with the solitary future facing him…until he met Jolene.

As Andy and Jolene find themselves confronted by difficult choices, will they trust in God's guidance—or will the allure of their deepening friendship only lead to further temptation?

An exceptional novel of love that must be denied. But what do you do, when everything you do to put distance between yourself and the one you love but can't have, fails to remove the longing from your heart?

Cindy has written so many of my favorite "Amish" fiction books. Her characters are flawed but lovable and her descriptions are lush and vivid.

I love that Cindy brings her characters from one book to another - sometimes as a minor plot line and sometimes just as a name dropped in passing - each book feels like a little bit of home.

You can click here for more information about the book.

Jody

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

The Most Inspiring Book I've Read In A Long Time

When illness completely stole Travis Freeman’s sight at 12 years old, his dream of playing football felt dead. However, the unshakable kid found a way to overcome the impossible and not only play football, but become a champion.

A severe migraine attacked Travis after he’d returned from a week at summer camp. Multiple visits to doctors in different cities yielded no diagnosis. Not until an eye doctor saw something that sent Travis to the hospital clinging to his life. The undiagnosed condition was Cavernous Sinus Thrombosis, an infection attacking his ocular nerve. Doctors saved his life, but not his sight.

Doctors warned that he would go through a period of depression, but Travis never did. Instead this determined young man attacked learning to live in a sighted world with inspiring ferocity. “God let this happen to me for a reason,” Travis said.

Opting to stay at his school instead of attending the Kentucky School for the Blind, Travis was surrounded by a support system that had known him most of his life. That included the junior high football coach who found a spot on the team for Travis, not as a manager or water boy, but as a player. That year, with Travis playing Center, his team won the championship. Travis continued to play football all through high school, astonishing other teams and officials across the state.

Write with heart warming openness and honesty, Travis gives us an inside look at what happens with the unthinkable happens.

As the mother of a child who had medical conditions that drew us from hospital to hospital and doctor to doctor for eight years, I felt for this family who was hit out of the blue with this incident.Our son was diagnosed at 3 and was healed by the time he was 11 but in those eight years I marveled at the resiliency of a child to accept and move forward. And that is what Travis has done.

As mentioned in the book synopsis, Travis did not go through depression - but what it doesn't mention is the humor Travis met his blindness with. There were more than a few antidotes in the book that had me laughing out loud.

I was truly inspired by this young man's acceptance and even embracing of his blindness.

If you only pick up one non-fiction book this year - this should be it. The book is highly recommended and I can't wait to see the movie it inspired!

Jody

My copy of this book was generously provided by Glass Road Media.

When Mercy Rains by Kim Vogel Sawyer

She left, heavily weighted with secrets.
But God reveals all things, in His timing.
And He redeems them.
Suzanne Zimmerman was only seventeen and pregnant when her shamed mother quietly sent her away from their Old Order Mennonite community in Kansas. With her old home, family, and first love firmly behind her, Suzanne moved to Indiana, became a nurse, and raised a daughter, Alexa, on her own.

Now, nearly twenty years later, an unexpected letter arrives from Kansas. Her brother asks her to bring her nursing abilities home and care for their ailing mother. His request requires that Suzanne face a family that may not have forgiven her and a strict faith community. It also means seeing Paul Aldrich, her first love.   

Paul, widowed with an eight-year-old son, is relieved to see Suzanne again, giving him the chance to beg her forgiveness for his past indiscretion. But when he meets Alexa, his guilt flickers in the glare of Suzanne’s prolonged secret—one that changes everything.

Suzanne had let go of any expectation for forgiveness long ago. Does she dare hope in mercy–and how will her uncovered past affect the people she loves the most?

What do you do when you make a mistake that takes you away from your family and then you make a choice that means you can't go back again?

Suzanne Zimmerman was to give up her baby for adoption and then come back home - but she stays in Indiana and raises her daughter. Until the fateful day that a letter comes from her brother asking her to come home to take care of their mother, who has become paralyzed in an accident.

But what will happen when Suzanne shows up with a daughter but no husband? Can she break through her mother's bitterness? Can she face the man who fathered her child? And what about the secret that she's tried desperately to hide?

Such a wonderful story of redemption and reconciliation - and with a surprise twist at the end!

For more information on this book click here

Highly recommended.

Jody

 I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.