Follow Here To Purchase A Life of Joy: A Novel (Kauffman Amish Bakery Series)

Author: Amy Clipston

Publisher: Zondervan

ISBN:  978-0-310-31996-2

Legalism is found often in religious sects, especially when it involves relationships with those outside the community or not of the exact faith. Best-selling author, Amy Clipston addresses the struggle between family and friendship in her last of five Kauffman Amish Bakery Series, A Season of Love.

This advance reading copy paperback has a young Amish woman in a field of flowers depicted on the front jacket and several paragraphs about the book content and author along with the marketing campaign and note of uncorrected proof on the back. Inside, there are preliminary pages that include a helpful glossary of the Pennsylvania Dutch language and extensive Kauffman family tree along with a note to the reader. The ending includes a discussion question section, acknowledgments and website information. No grammar or typographical errors were noted.

A Season of Love is a story of eighteen year old Katie Joy Kauffman who lives, breathes and loves her Amish family, history and religion. While her two best friends find romantic relationships within the community, Katie struggles to find her own sense of belonging and maturing as she helps in the family bakery. Through her loneliness after being baptized into the church, she starts to take notice of Jake, a Mennonite who is a carpenter apprentice at his grandfather’s furniture shop nearby who used to date her friend’s sister. The two of them fall in forbidden yet unexplored love.

Having a strict, over-protected, devout Amish father who is legalistic and only recognizes appearance over truth, Katie is grounded and chastised for not only meeting and talking with Jake, but for supposed unbecoming physical contact. Misunderstood and trying to avoid her new found feelings of love, Katie struggles with trying to juxtapose having a relationship outside the Amish community while remaining a part of her family and foremost, keeping a strong relationship to God. Her father and the Amish’s beliefs and rules are not to be broken, even during a crisis or dire exception.

Clipston does an excellent job of telling how life is in an Amish community, especially by using italicized Dutch wording instead of English. With no desire to use electrical or up-to-date products, one learns how the community adapts to current day life without them. However, a reader might be surprised a fetal ultrasound too progressive for the Amish lifestyle.

This book has no profanity and is Biblically based with one minor violent scene. It is a perfect book for a young teenage girl or female Christian who wants to know more about the Amish and learn about unrequited, unadulterated love.


Follow Here To Purchase A Life of Joy: A Novel (Kauffman Amish Bakery Series)