Revell (August 1, 2009)
Elizabeth Duncan is forced to take responsibility for her younger siblings when their father dies under suspicious circumstances. To protect them as well as herself she must flee from the only home they have ever known taking them along. Neither Payton nor Hannah care to join the Quaker settlement Elizabeth calls upon for refuge for their family. Payton however soon grows to respect their ways and follow them as one of their converts. Hannah is too free-spirited and cannot tame her wild tendencies. Elizabeth turns out to be more like Hannah than their brother and although she appears to accept the Quaker ways her heart and soul cannot be bent to their strict rules of conduct. While among the Quakers, Elizabeth meets and falls in love with a young man who was raised among them from an early age though not born into their community. Ethan also finds himself falling for Elizabeth but according to Quaker laws no one is to marry or single out another with differing affection. Eventually Elizabeth finds herself having to flee once more to protect Ethan and free her sister from demands beyond her ability to obey. While she tries to avoid the man she could never love or care for yet demands her as his wife based on his account of a verbal agreement with her father she finds another refuge but the only thing that can truly end his menace for her is the end of his life. What will Ethan decide in her absence, will he return to the community where he and Payton have belonged as if born to it or will he abandon the values he was raised with to pursue the woman who has stolen his heart? (ISBN#9780800733629, 394pp, $13.99)
Codicil:
Visit Ann’s website. Purchase a copy or find out more about the book.
Thanks for reviewing my Shaker book, The Believer, Melissa. I always appreciate those who not only read my books but also tell others about my stories. The Believer and also The Outsider are based on research I’ve done on the Shaker communities that had a lot of converts in the nineteenth century but gradually died out after the Civil War. Only a very few (four perhaps) Shakers still remain today. The Shakers or Believers in the Second Coming of Christ as they called themselves were a unique group of people and their demand that all their converts give up family relationships and live as brothers and sisters was only one of the ideas that separated them from the Quakers.