The Search

November 15, 2010

In this third series title (after The Waiting and The Choice), Bess Reihl is spending the summer helping her grandmother Bertha work Rose Hill Farm. Lainey O'Toole is on her way to culinary school when her car breaks down in the Amish community of Stoney Ridge, the very town where she made a fateful choice 15 years before. Now she will have to face her past as the separate worlds of both these women collide. VERDICT This pleasant tale of love and forgiveness has a homespun feel that will attract readers who like character-driven stories with a relaxed pace. And, of course, bonnet fiction is always popular; fans of Marta Perry will snap this one up.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2010
Lainey OToole is harboring secrets that could tear Bertha Riehls family apart, but shes inescapably drawn into their circle when young Bess Riehl arrives in Stony Ridge, Pennsylvania, to spend the summer with her grandmother. Raised in Berlin, Ohio, by her widowed carpenter father, 14-year-old Bess finds much to interest her at Rose Hill Farm, especially handsome Billy Lapp, the farmhand. And when Bertha gets herself and Bess arrested to convince her son to return home, Jonah and Lainey find themselves keeping company more and more often, although shes necessarily cautious about sharing her thoughts with the one man she could hurt. Fishers newest Amish romance is set in 1972, which makes the casual treatment of her bone-marrow-transplant subplot somewhat problematic, but overall this is a thought-provoking contribution to the genre, especially as it taps into recurrent themes of modern American women converting to Anabaptist ways, and into questions of genetics and nature versus nurture.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)