This novel, its author writes, \u201cwas born out of the real grief of the West Nickel Mines schoolhouse shooting,\u201d when a gunman shot 10 girls at an Amish school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While this book begins on that terrible morning in October, 2006, it doesn\u2019t indulge in any violence, quickly switching to the voice of survivor Emma Walsh, a dozen years later. She is \u201con [her] Rumspringa year\u201d along with her fianc\u00e9, Isaac Ames. (This custom gives the pair a temporary pass to engage in behavior that their community would normally forbid.) Emma works for Sara Caldwell, whose husband runs a medical clinic for the Amish, and Sara begins to develop parental feelings for Emma. Gilbert presents chapters featuring the points of view of both Sara and Ruth, Emma\u2019s mother, whose older daughter died in the carnage. Ruth may be the most interesting character, and the story at first withholds what has divided Emma and Ruth. Only Emma speaks in the first person, which will become more crucial as the story advances. As the novel jumps around in time, the shooting haunts each character. Sara remembers its aftermath: \u201cThere was confusion in the mortuary because of the sameness of the girls\u2019 dress, the sameness of their hair\u2026\u201d Emma, drawn to the books in Sara\u2019s library, discovers she\u2019s pregnant, setting up her conundrum: embrace the community where she came of age or look toward the wider world? The resulting narrative is a quiet chamber drama where internal conflicts abound.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This novel, its author writes, \u201cwas born out of the real grief of the West Nickel Mines schoolhouse shooting,\u201d when a gunman shot 10 girls at an Amish school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While this book begins on that terrible morning in October, 2006, it doesn\u2019t indulge in any violence, quickly switching to the voice of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}