Monday, May 12, 2014

Seasons of Tomorrow, Amish Visnes and Orchards book 4 by Cindy Woodsmall

Seasons of Tomorrow by Cindy Woodsmall is the 4th installment in the Amish Vines and Orchard series.  This series studies the working and living lives of the King and Byler families as they learn to live together in the same house as well as work together establishing a new Amish settlement and apple business.  They would grow closer together as well as learn to work together.  They make some of the rules for the new settlement but are constantly being interfered with by the caring as well as jealous involvement of their former settlement.  They have no bishop and so mostly rely on the religious advise of their pastor Stephen Byler.  Their former settlement have people who jealously regarded them and they now know that they have within their midst an informer who regularly reports to any indiscretions no matter how slight.  Since they have no idea who this person is they must be careful whenever they may stray from their roots no matter how good their reasoning is.  Rhoda has future insights which come to her at inopportune moments.  She knows that at sometime in the future that the settlement will have to deal with the loss of one of their females.  She feels that it will be either Phoebe, who is pregnant with her and Stephen's 4 child, or Lydia who is rapidly getting more involved with an Englisher man who is an integral part of the business and one that they would like to bring in as a partner.  Phoebe and Stephen have recently lost their last child and Lydia is one of the sisters in the King family and has been ostracized in their former settlement because of her ideas which don't include joining the church though she is rapidly approaching the age of the decision. Rhoda has been ostracized by the settlement for "practicing witchcraft" because of her visions of the future of which she has no control and tries to ignore whenever possible.  When Phoebe develops an H1N1 pneumonia and Rhoda starts seeing her in the corners of her vision holding the baby she is so afraid that her friend and her baby will die.  The hospital has Phoebe in a drug induced coma to improve the chances of survival of both baby and mom but the hospital personnel still don't hold out much hope.  Phoebe is covered in prayer in the King settlement, in the old settlement of Harvest Mills as well as in the hospital.  The group decides to break the rules once again so that they can tape the voices of Phoebe's children so that if Phoebe can hear she can hear their voices in her room.  Will all of this be enough? Read this book to find out.
I loved this book as I have loved all of the Vines and Orchards series.  I hope that Ms Woodsmall has a plan for a future installment.  This book is excellent reading for any girl or woman of any age. 
This book was provided by Waterbrook Press for this review.

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