The Wish

 Shirley J.                   Adult Christian Fiction                                   Amish vs. "English" life

The Wish by Beverly Lewis   432 pages

Living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is beautiful and growing up Amish or Plain in a world of vast technological advances can be challenging.    Best friends, Leona and Gloria don't even seem to notice as they happily go through life but one day out of the blue,  Gloria's family just picks up and moves to Arkansas no explanation but talk is something happened with Gloria's father and the community and now the family is shunned, but no one was saying why or what happened.  Leona and Gloria are devastated.  They were close as sisters for the years they got to spend together growing up and now hardly time to say their goodbyes.  For 4 years no word came of Gloria nor her family, though Leona kept them in her daily prayers then finally a letter arrived from Gloria for Leona.  She told her how much she had thought of her over the past years and how much she missed her friend  She explained that her family was now living as the "English" (non-Amish) and she and Leona cooked up a plan for Leona to come visit.  Leona prays and prays that Gloria and her family will come back to the Plain people and hopes if she visits she might be able to bring them back to the fold.   Gloria's father is way against going back.   Her mother follows her father as do her brothers but while Gloria has settled into the "English" way of life, she wears jeans, has a cellphone, an "English" boyfriend, and she drives a car instead of a horse drawn buggy.   Things are sure different when Leona arrives, but, while they all seem to have acclimated to this new lifestyle there is still a longing in Gloria to revisit the plain folk.   A good story that keeps the reader interested all the way to the end.   Like the song says, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."  I recommend this book to teens on up.   A tale of the endurance of friendship and faith.