The Outsider

By Ann H. Gabhart

Description:

Gabrielle Hope and her mother joined the Harmony Hill Shaker community in 1807. The community promised stability and devotion that Gabrielle wholeheartedly embraces. But when a local doctor must be brought into Harmony Hill from the outside, he sets into motion a chain of events that will challenge Gabrielle's loyalty to the Shakers. As she falls deeper into a forbidden love for this man of the world, Gabrielle must make a choice. Can she experience true happiness in this simple and chaste community? Or will she abandon her brothers and sisters for a life of the unknown?
Soulful and filled with romance, The Outsider lets you live within a bygone time among a unique and peculiar people.

Book Takeaway:

I would hope that readers would be swept along by the story and embrace the characters. Readers will learn more about the odd religious group commonly called Shakers and also walk through some valleys with the characters as they search for spiritual truth and love.

Awards:

Why the author wrote this book:

I like finding a historical era or event to drop my characters down into and live the time through them. I live close to a restored Shaker village that's operated as a living history museum. When I started researching the village and the beliefs of the Shakers, I found their history fascinating and at the same time wondered how they drew in so many followers with their many rules, the hardest perhaps that they thought all should live as brothers and sisters and have no marital relationships at all. I picked my era and found out more about the War of 1812 and then let my characters lead me through their stories and their faith journeys.