The Secret (Seasons of Grace Series #1) » (Original)

Beverly Lewis, raised in Pennsylvania Amish country, is a former schoolteacher, an accomplished musician, and an award-winning author of more than eighty books, many of which have appeared on bestseller lists, including USA Today and The New York Times. Her novel The Brethren won a 2007 Christy Award for excellence in Christian fiction. Beverly and her husband, David, live in Colorado.

In the seemingly ordinary Amish home of Grace Byler, secrets abound. Why does her mother weep in the night? Why does her father refuse to admit something is dreadfully wrong? Then, in one startling moment, everything Grace assumed she knew is shattered. Her mother's disappearance leaves Grace reeling and unable to keep her betrothal promise to her long-time beau. Left to pick up the pieces of her life, Grace questions all she has been taught about love, family, and commitment.

Heather Nelson is an English grad student, stunned by a doctor's diagnosis. Surely fate would not allow her father to lose his only daughter after the death of his wife a few years before. In denial and telling no one she is terminally ill, Heather travels to Lancaster County--the last place she and her mother had visited together. Will Heather find healing for body and spirit?

As the lives of four wounded souls begin to weave together like an Amish patchwork quilt, they each discover missing pieces of their life puzzles--and glimpse the merciful and loving hand of God.

Publishers Weekly

Popular novelist and Amish specialist Lewis (The Brethren) launches a new series with this volume. Two young women, Amish Grace Byler and graduate student Heather Nelson, stand as counterpoints in parallel plots involving two secrets. Grace's mother is troubled; Heather, whose mother has died of cancer, tells no one in her circle of her own diagnosis of terminal illness, which drives her to Pennsylvania Amish country in search of healing. Grace's mother makes a decision that painfully complicates the action and drives it forward. Grace, her family and friends and the Amish milieu are drawn with characteristically ample detail, right down to jars of preserves set out on the tables at many bountiful Amish meals. Lots of powerful emotions go characteristically unspoken in this reticent culture, though the reader won't miss them. By comparison, the emotional high-stakes Heather plot is less detailed and consequently less engrossing. Lewis lays out-and knots-many plot threads to pursue and resolve in subsequent installments in the series, ensuring readers' return. (Mar.)