The Tempted Soul

By Adina Senft

Description:

Carrie Miller longs for children, but after eleven years of marriage, that blessing eludes her. So she fills her days with caring for her home, making artistic gifts and fancy cakes, and caring for her flock of chickens, every one of whom has a name and who under no circumstances will go in the soup pot. Carrie also finds support in her friendship with Amelia Fischer and Emma Stolzfus, and relishes the afternoons they share working on a wedding quilt. Carrie and her husband Melvin love each other, and together have survived many lean years thanks to the kindness of their church community. Yet month after month, they remain childless.

And now a local teenager, Lydia Zook, is pregnant out of wedlock and plans to give the baby up for adoption—rejecting a blessing that Carrie would cherish with all her heart. So when Carrie overhears two English women talking in the fabric store one day about medical options available to non-Amish women in her situation, she takes it as a sign from God. But Melvin and the bishop see it differently. Is it really God’s will that she pursue this, or is her longing to be a mother tempting her to stray from her Amish beliefs?

Book Takeaway:

Sometimes in pursuing the blessing we want, we miss the ones we have.

Awards:

Why the author wrote this book:

The ability of Amish women to live with the strict confines of the Ordnung is interesting to me, having lived within similar strictures in the past. But what if the one thing you wanted most was the one thing denied you--and then you found a way to have it? And what if it wasn't allowed? These questions are worked out in The Tempted Soul.