The Harvest of Grace by Cindy Woodsmall is the 3rd book in the "Ada's House" series. Even though I had not read the first two books I was able to enjoy this story on it's own. I live in the midst of a large Amish community in northern Indiana, and am usually not a fan of Amish fiction, feeling that it doesn't portray the real life of the Amish, at least in my experiences with them. Cindy Woodsmall's books are the exception to me - her stories are believable yet entertaining.
In this story, Sylvia is a mid-20's Amish woman who loves working on her family's dairy farm. She is the oldest of 9 daughters, so there are no sons to take over the farm (Amish tradition is that the males usually have priority in inheriting land). She has been dating an Amish man, but this relationship falls apart and she leaves her family to go to work on another dairy farm a distance away without telling her sisters where she is going. Once on the Blank farm, she meets the sole surviving Blank child, Aaron, who is returning from treatment for alcoholism. Aaron has dreams to sell his parents farm, which is deeply in debt, and buy an appliance shop, but Sylvia is determined to work at all costs to save the farm. They end up working closely on the farm and their strong personalities and differences of opinion clash frequently. Sylvia does end up reconciling with her family, and they find a way to save the farm and keep it operating. I enjoyed reading this book.
You can read an excerpt of the first chapter at the publisher's website.
I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.
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