The Hope of Refuge (Ada's House Series #1) Book

This book, in which a young widowed single mother who had been raised in foster care, ran to Amish country following a clue left in her mother's diary, trying to escape a stalker. Surprisingly enough, when this stranger enters their community dressed in immodest clothes and camps out in a barn, she isn't welcomed with open arms by all. However Ephraim remembers a young girl who visited their community years ago, and yes, Cara is that girl, and yes, he is still carrying a torch for her. I rather doubt anyone starting this book would be surprised at the resolution but I'd say this is one of the better-written Amish novels I've read.

I'll admit to having little more than a cursory knowledge of the Amish, their beliefs and lifestyles. I do know that as a Catholic I often find things in Christian fiction written by Protestants about Catholics that are either just plain wrong or are misunderstood. With that in mind, I don't consider a novel like this to necessarily be completely correct about the Amish(though I don't know enough to point out any errors, if there are any), but I have read novels in which the Amish, all of them except perhaps a "bad guy" come off as saints (loving, patient, praying, forgiving)and I've read others where it is obvious that the author's sympathy is with the Amish who maintain the family ties and lifestyle but adopt personal religious beliefs more in line with evangelical Protestantism than with the Amish faith. Neither is true of this book. Most of these Amish are very human. They react out of fear, pride, jealousy and love. They care for each other, but aren't good at reaching out to outsiders in need. This book presents the rules that seem so unreasonable to us in a sympathetic manner and explains some of the "why".

I have really mixed feelings on this book. I not only didn't like the female main character, at times I actually hated her. She was mean, selfish, rude, not able to look at life from anyone else's perspective, even to the point of destroying the lives of other people, a liar and a thief, etc. And she blamed it all on the way she grew up: abandoned, placed in foster care, a teen runaway with a stalker. The thing that frustrated me the most is that she refused to take any responsibility for her bad choices. Everything was blamed on her background. Her behavior was even excused by others because of her background. Well, we make choices. We cannot always choose our circumstances, but we can always choose our attitude, our response to our circumstances. The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg, as the saying goes. Many have grown up in foster care and turned out just fine. Not everyone who is abandoned turns into a bitter shrew. Perhaps the author wanted to show how bad Cara was in order to show how important her transformation was. But I just couldn't feel any sympathy for the woman, and definitely couldn't see what in the world the main male character Ephraim saw in her. Did he allow her physical beauty to blind him to her character?

I also found it difficult to believe how many sad, sick, secrets were at work in this Amish community. Yes, everyone has problems, but it seemed that every family in the community had some really negative stuff going on, and it finally got tiring to hear about all their problems.

Also, there were so many stories intertwined in this book, I found it a little difficult to keep them all straight, and they weren't all resolved in this book, so the author obviously intended this as a series. I did go ahead and begin the sequel, and I am liking it somewhat better. I listened to this as an audiobook.