The Englisch Daughter

 

 

The Englisch Daughter by Cindy Woodsmall and Erin Woodsmall   352 pages

 “In the ever-changing world when life was clam and steady one day and torn to shreds the next, three things were steady: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these was love.”

This quote, which appears on Page 242, succinctly captures the essence of this novel.

There are two plot lines, one greater than the other.  First there is the major plot involving Jemima and Roy Gaber. An Old Order Amish family, Jemima and Roy have four children. While she tends to the children and the house, Roy spends long hours training and selling horses. Roy’s life is also complicated. He’s gone more and more often for long stretches of time.

This is only one of the things that create a big strain on their marriage that pushes it to the brink.  Roy is also recovering from a carriage accident that he and oldest daughter, Laura, had last year.  Roy’s sister, Abigail, had taken a leave of absence from her teaching position to help, but it’s not enough.

Abigail and Jemima had dreams of owning and operating a food truck.  They have been saving for years. When an advertisement offering what seems to be exactly what they envisioned, Roy must admit that the money is gone. He has depleted their savings account. The hurt Roy has inflicted upon Jemima is deep. But when she learns what he has done with the money that cuts the wound even deeper.

The other plot line is the attraction that Abigail feels toward the new hired hand, Chris. Not currently practicing the Amish faith, Chris has been turned out of his parent’s home and shunned by the community. But nonetheless, the attraction is strong.

I really enjoyed this novel. It as fairly east to ascertain what the Amish words meant. I found the glossary when I was already two-thirds through. I think it would have been helpful to have upfront because I was annoyed while I was reading, and highly annoyed after I found the novel.

There are some very exciting part to the story that had my nerves on edge. 

 “The Englisch Daughter” receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Laurus

Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin, translated by Lisa C Hayden, 362 pages

Laurus is a beautiful, subtle novel set in a vividly recreated Medieval Russia.  It tells the story of Arseny, called Rukinets and Ustin and Amvrosy and Laurus, a doctor, a penitent, a pilgrim, and a hermit, not successively but progressively, as he and his world are poisoned by sin and healed by grace.  

In her introduction, translator Hayden candidly discusses the difficulties of bringing Vodolazkin's deliberately inconsistent use of archaic language into English - without being able to experience the original, it seems that she has done an excellent job, reinforcing the story's intimations of the relationship between time and eternity, the living and the dead.  This is only one of many profound themes in this marvel of a novel - richly imaginative, empathetic without being sentimental, historically authentic and yet timeless.

Burial Rites

Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent, 314 pages

This was a well-written, well-researched, beautiful book about a nineteenth-century execution in Iceland.  Agnes is sentenced to wait out her last months before being executed for murder, on a farm where the farmer's family comes to hear her side of the story and see that nothing is quite so black and white.  This is an excellent book for book clubs- there is alot to discuss and alot to learn about another country and another time.

Different Kind of Cell

A Different Kind of Cell: The Story of a Murderer Who Became a Monk by W Paul Jones, 122 pages

Clayton Anthony Fountain was the worst of the worst.  At the age of 19, while serving in the Marines, he murdered a Staff Sergeant with a point-blank shotgun blast.  In prison he associated with the Aryan Brotherhood and over the course of nine years murdered three inmates and a guard.  The last murder also involved a disabling injury to a second guard and serious injuries to a third, despite the fact that Fountain was, at that time, being kept in the control unit at the US Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, which had replaced Alcatraz as the highest security penal institution in America.  As there was no federal death penalty at the time, a special cell was constructed for Fountain at a mental institution in Springfield, Missouri, and the prisoner allowed no human contact.  Later, he was moved into another cell in the same complex, which had been built to hold Timothy McVeigh in the event he wasn't executed.

Beginning in the late '80s, Fountain experienced - or claimed to experience - a remarkable conversion.  Over the course of fifteen years, he gradually transformed his solitary cell into a hermitage, associated with the Trappists at Assumption Abbey.  The author of this book, Fr Jones, was his spiritual director for much of this time, and the story centers on how Fountain struggled with his past sins and future vocation.  Thankfully, the author neither denies his subject's crimes nor uncritically accepts his change of heart.

Fr Jones is not a professional biographer, and this is not a conventional biography - there is no detailed account of his childhood, or his crimes - but it is not meant to be, either.  Like Fountain himself, the book asks the question, "Is anyone beyond forgiveness?" and answers, "No."

The Kept

The Kept by James Scott 357 Pages


Set in the late 19th century this book main character Elspeth Howell is coming home after many months of working as a midwife.  As she crests the hill she notices that the farm looks abandoned.  She finds that her family has been shot and the bodies are scattered throughout the house.   It later develops that one son, Caleb,  is still alive and he and his mother go on a trek to seek revenge against the 3 men who cut down their family.

As the book progresses we are filled into the back story of Elsbeth and her family and when the two settle into a town we meet a whole host of characters who all seem to have pasts they regret.

Wonderful descriptive writing the book will keep you hooked until the end.