An Amish Cradle by Beth Wiseman, Amy Clipston, Kathleeen Fuller and Vannetta Chapman is a group of Amish novels with each author writing one each. Each novel tells of a pregnancy or birth which brings new difficulties to living with God's will. In the first one Ruth Anne and her young husband have just had their new baby boy. They love him with all their being but something is going on with the midwife and Ruth Anne's mother. Something that they are not telling her. The neighbors and her family visits and some act normally but some she realizes she catches worried looks from others. What is wrong with her baby? The first time that she hears Down syndrome she doesn't know exactly what that means. Does it just mean that he will learn to walk different with his different toes? Will he just look different with his different looking eyes? And why doesn't he want to nurse? And what is wrong with Levi her beloved spouse? Why does he act so stricken about their son having Down syndrome? Can he not love a son that looks different? Why did he suddenly go back to work when he his time off all arranged? And why will he not talk to her anymore? Then it seems that every time she takes her son to the doctor there is a new problem--his heart, his eyes, his hearing. Ruth Anne starts going to a support group for parents raising Down syndrome children and finds answers to some of her problems but more than that she finds comfort from them and ways of dealing with her and the baby's problems. But Levi still won't treat her as before--she misses the old Levi who loved and held her when she had problems and listened to her. This story is how Levi and Ruth Anne learn to live with God's will and find God's blessing in their life.
Carolyn is learning to trust her new husband and quit comparing him to others. When Carolyn was a 16 year old she had trusted her boyfriend and after she became pregnant he had left her to her own devises. Carolyn had raised her son on her own with only a small amount of help from her family. She and her family remained close, she of course lived with them to begin with and later moved into her own home when she decided that it was time. She later found love with a man who was worthy of her love, married him and became in due time pregnant but found that she had trouble trusting that he would stand by not only herself but her son. She had difficulty with when Joshua said that he loved Benjamin when he adopted him that he really would love him as he loved his natural children. Carolyn learns in this story to accept her family's love and support and not to lean so heavily on her own efforts to solve all of life's problems.
Ellie became blind in a terrible accident but she had learned to live with her blindness and accept it. Her mother on the other hand still treated her as if she were a child. Why can she not see that Ellie though she needs help with her new twin girls but that is not much more than anyone would need who were trying to raise twins. Why does her mother worry over every little thing? After the birth of the girls her mother just moved in and wouldn't let Ellie hardly touch the babies let alone care for them as a mother should. And who is this Rachel that she keeps calling baby Julia? Ellie knows that she must set boundaries with her mother but she is dreading it. This novel tells how Ellie and her husband, Chris deal with the stresses of new twin babies and also learn to set boundaries with Ellie's mother.
The 4th novel finds 42 year old Etta pregnant after thinking that she never would be again. She and her husband, Mose have 6 children who are mostly if not completely raised and who could ever forget the baby girl who died 7 years ago after being born too early. This story is about how Etta and Mose learn to accept God's will of having another child while at the same time dealing with loosing the farm that they have always lived in due to financial reasons.
I loved every one of these novels and just wished that they were longer so that I could enjoy them longer. I read this book in about 2 days because they were so good. If you are a lover of Amish novels you will love these stories. These stories can be read by girls and women of any age and enjoyed by all.
I received this book from Booksneeze for this review.
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