A Shining Light - A Book Review

A Shining Light by Judith Miller begins when Andrea Wilson finds out that her husband has been lost at sea.  It is hard for her to grieve over him since he was abusive to her and their son Lukas.  Andrea makes the decision to return to her father's farm, but when she arrives she only finds more heartache.  The family farm has burnt to the ground and her father has died.   On top of that her father had sold the farm to the Amanan's before he died.  Andrea has no money and no place to go.

The people of the nearby Amana village invite Andrea and Lukas to stay with them until she makes other plans.   The people are so kind and it doesn't take long for Andrea and her son to find their place among the people.  Lukas befriends Dirk Knefler, the village tinsmith and sparks soon fly between Dirk and Andrea.  It seems as if Andrea and Lukas have finally found their place and are content with the life they are now living, but right when everything seems to be falling into place in Andrea's life the unexpected happens and Andrea has to learn to trust in God for her future.

    I am not really fond of books written from first person narrative.  It is just a personal preference of mine.  This book is written from that perspective and because of that I struggled with it a little bit.  The author writes from each character's point of view and has it laid out in a way that is easy to keep up with the changes in perspective.  It took me a little while to really get into the book and I do think it has to do with my preference of the first person narrative, but once I got into the book I could hardly put it down.  It was a great story line although somewhat predictable.   I really enjoyed reading about the Amana people and would like to check out some of the author's other books.  This book was actually the third book in the Home to Amana series, so I guess I'm going to go backwards. : )

If you would like to check out Judith Miller's website you can do so by clicking HERE.

***This book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for my review.