Book Talk Tuesday: A Quilt For Jenna

I'm a little tired of Amish fiction so I opened A Quilt for Jenna with just a bit of trepidation.

I was immediately captivated by Jerusha's pain and her need to quilt and flee her life and her grief. I loved the book! Another reviewer said, “Amish + Quilts = reader’s delight!”

I concur.

Jerusha and Reuben fell in love but Reuben wasn’t an Amish man in good standing with the community. Then he went off to fight in World War II. He came home a changed man, determined to live by the Ordung, and return to his Amish roots. He and Jerusha marry and are happy.

A few years later, Jerush and Reuben lose their only child, Jenna. Neither Reuben nor Jerusha can find their way back to the other. Reuben blames himself forJenna’s death. So does Jerusha. Reuben has left their Amish community. Jerusha has stitched a wonderful quilt that is to be her ticket out of Apple Creek.

On Thanksgiving weekend 1950, a horrific storm blew through Ohio, capturing Jerusha and her quilt in its fury. A little girl in the back seat of another car is abandoned and left to die. The two find each other and take refuge from the storm.

Patrick Craig is equally as good at both the male and female points of view. The battle scenes at Guadalcanal are as painstakingly crafted as Jerusha's quilting scenes.

I liked how the backstory of what happened during World War II was interwoven with the 1950's events.

Mr. Craig accomplished what I thought was impossible: weaving a compelling Amish/quilting story into a wonderful tale of love, loss, and redemption.
I'll definitely read the next one in the Apple Creek Dreams series!

Book Talk Tuesday

 

I’m not really into Amish fiction, but I read this one on a friend’s recommendation.

 

The Amish Midwife by Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould.

Lexie is looking for answers. She was adopted into a Mennonite family in Oregon. With both parents now dead, it seems a good time to search for her birth family in Pennsylvania. Armed with a carved wooden box, some locks of hair, and a quilt, she arranges to work as a nurse-midwife in Pennsylvania.

A request from a friend of a friend brings her to Marta, a lay midwife with problems and secrets galore.

The authors did a good job weaving the various story threads together. I guessed the plot twists, but I still wanted to read how they explained the circumstances and they did a good job at that.

The Amish are portrayed lovingly, warts and all. The Plain lifestyle is neither patronized nor glorified.

I may just pick up another Amish fiction title one day!

Thanks again, Karen!

Fiction Friday

The current hot ticket in Christian fiction is Amish. Anything with a bonnet and/or a buggy on the cover is a surefire bestseller, sez the prognosticators and fiction buyers. For those of us who don't write Amish fiction, we have lots of stories and ideas and nothing to do with them.

Since we finished Curveball, I've been thinking about what to do next. I still have publishing hopes for my other completed novels and I've already posted and blogged everything that has been rejected.

I've been playing with the idea of just writing, kind of free form, very little editing, 500 words or so every week. But I needed an idea. Then I remembered that everyone wants Amish fiction.  Then I remembered that I don't know anything about the Amish culture except what I've seen on TV and in the movies and read. Then I realized I know some Mennonites. Not the Old Order Mennonites, who look and believe similar to the Amish, but Mennonite Brethren, who are still pretty darn conservative.

I decided that I know enough about both the Mennonites and the Amish to write a story. What I don't know, I'll fake. It'll be 500 words or so a week. I have a few characters sketched out. I have a premise.

So, I present:

The Bandbox Hat

I have no clue what the hat is or where it came from. I just figured I could get a buggy and a bonnet on the cover.
So imagine, an open buckboard wagon from behind. A man is steering the wagon. A woman in a white cap is in the back. She has one hand resting on a round hat box. She is looking ahead.



Next week we begin.