Amish Christmas at North Star

Amish Christmas at North Star: Four Stories of Love & Family by Cindy Woodsmall, Mindy Starns Clark and Emily Clark, Amanda Flower, and Katie Ganshert   400 pages

These four novellas are interrelated in that they revolve around four babies all born during a 2000 blizzard in North Star, Pennsylvania, to Amish couples. Midwife Rebekah Schlabach delivers the babies at her birthing center; just her and the new mothers-to-be. It was quiet a night.  All went well and the babies became known as Rebekah’s Babies. The years passed. It’s now 2015.

In the first novella, Guiding Star, author Katie Ganshert gets the ball rolling. Englischer Chase Wellington discovers an article about the babies in his mother’s attic. It seems that one of the babies and her mother disappeared shortly after she arrived. Chase is a freelance reporter and decides to investigate what happened to them.

In the second story, Mourning Star,Eden is a single woman working at her parents’ creamery, Dutch Village Fudge. Every day Isaac Yoder comes in to satisfy his sweet tooth. Eden and Isaac become friends; that’s all since he’s so much older. But when Isaac is killed by one of the horses he boards at his stables, Eden has a gut feeling it wasn’t an accident.

The third novella, In the Stars, Kore Detweiler isn’t Amish. He was ready to join the community, but after the third of Rebekah’s babies, Savilla Beiler, rejects him, he moves to Virginia. However, when he grandmother takes a fall and doesn’t regain consciousness right away, the family fears the worst. Kore heads home. He knows he will run into Savilla, but isn’t sure he can control his emotions.

In the final novella, Star of Grace, Andy Danner wants nothing to do with the North Star community after Nellie isn’t ready to marry him. He moved to Mississippi and prefers to stay there for the rest of his life. However, his younger brother Sam misses him. A lot. Andy agrees to come him if Sam earns the money to buy a ticket.

All the stories were well done. There isn’t a lot of tension in any of them. But readers usually know that when they pick up a book like this. Still, the stories have all the qualities necessary for a good story: good plot, a little romance, some mystery, and a moral. And since all take place at Christmas, it was a heartwarming read.

I give Amish Christmas at North Star 3 out of 5 stars. A nice read; nothing really special.

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