Book Review: A Simple Amish Christmas

Author: Vanetta Chapman
Title: A Simple Amish Christmas
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Publish Date:  October 2010
Rating: 5 stars
Book Blurb: Annie Weaver always planned to return home, but the 20-year old RN has lived in Philadelphia for three years now. As her time of rumschpringe is about to come to an abrupt end, bringing for Annie an overwhelming sense of loneliness. She returns home and finds herself face-to-face with a budding romance with an Amish farmer and Annie has several important choices to make.

Review: Vanetta Chapman's A Simple Amish Christmas is a wonderfully sweet tale about an Amish girl returning to the fold after her rumschpringe has ended.  For those not totally aware of the Amish culture, rumschpringe is that time between childhood and adulthood, where the Amish can be a bit freer with their lives.

In A Simple Amish Christmas, Annie Weaver has spent her time with her aenti "aunt" in Philadelphia working as a nurse. She returns to her home when her father is injured in a buggy accident on the way home from Samuel Yoder's house.

The story is really just a very simple love story, of a man afraid to love again, after the loss of his first wife and child and of a girl on the brink of adulthood, trying to fit in. Vanetta shows the Amish way of life beautifully while adding just the right measure of reality so that you don't forget that these people live like this today in their communities in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The characters were all so real and their problems were no different from those faced by any other 20 year old woman.  At times during the story it was hard to believe that the setting was present day, but the Amish culture is very old-fashioned.  Vannetta was really able to take you through the day to day life of these people and make you understand the culture and the faith they have, while watching Annie and Samuel discover their love.

This is definitely a Christmas story not to be missed.

~ Ebook provided by Net Galley