The Journey

February 14, 2011
Brunstetter (A Sister's Hope) sets her latest among the Kentucky Amish; the story may have moved, but the rest of the Amish plot is pretty familiar. Titus Fisher's heart is broken after his girlfriend, Phoebe Stoltzfus, who can't commit to him or to the Amish faith, moves to California. Englischer and family friend Allen Walters is passing through Lancaster County, Pa., to Kentucky, and he happens to know of an available job for a carpenter. So off go Titus and Allen to Kentucky, where Titus meets Suzanne Yoder, a young Amish woman who can't cook but who can do woodworking, and who painfully resembles Phoebe. There's growing and forgiving to do, as well as a fair amount of eating. Some of the plot complications are sensibly organic—Phoebe's return is logical. Others are purely arbitrary—stolen money in Titus's telephone shed—and verge on amateur. Yet given the appetite for Amish fiction, publishers haven't yet hit the limit for shoofly pies. While she's not the best of the bonnet bunch, Brunstetter's been at this a while now, and her readership will wilkom this.