| Summary: |
When, at age fifteen, Hannah Miller goes to work “on the Outside” of her Old Order Amish community in Pennsylvania, she promises her parents that she will not be tempted by the fancy lifestyle of “der Englischer.” Two years later, she has kept that promise, but she is now admitting to herself that it is not the English lifestyle that draws her. It is her love for her employer, Abram Goodman. Though she holds her love for Goodman as a secret in her heart, Hannah's fantasy world collapses when Goodman takes a wife. Hannah seeks a way to pay him back for the imagined infidelity of which she accuses him. Her actions set forth a ripple effect that touches not just Abram and his wife but Hannah's family and others in her Amish community. The Bond Woman is not the typical "Amish novel," in that it does not present the Amish in a pristine, idyllic lifestyle where the greatest transgressions might be coveting a piece of lace or loving music from "the Outside." Nor is this is this a predictable love story; rather, it is a complex psychological drama that deals with Hannah's dual conversion -- both inward and outward. Like an irresistible light, the story line of The Bond Woman draws Hannah and the reader in unpredictable directions.
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