Book 2 of Abram's Daughters. Spanning three generations, the Abram's Daughters series paints a powerful family portrait of four Amish sisters growing up in Gobbler's Knob, Lancaster County. In Book One, The Covenant, when oldest sister Sadie is beguiled by a handsome, dark-haired ''Englischer,'' it is younger sister Leah who suffers from her sister's shameful behavior. In Book Two, The Betrayal, Leah and her beloved Jonas are separated for half the year when he accepts a long-desired carpenter's apprenticeship in Ohio. They are confident that by letter and heart-felt promises, their love is strong enough to survive the temporary separation. But never could they have foreseen the bitter test facing them and their families.
This was such a heart-wrenching read! Yet I still want to read the rest of the books in the series. Beverly Lewis's books are incredibly readable and I finished this in two days. I was engrossed in the descriptions of the land and the food of Lancaster County and truly would like to visit it some day. As for the characters, I was taken in, yet again, by Abram's daughters. Sadie's grief and Leah's desire to settle down with her betrothed were just as engaging as in the last book and I was pleased to see that Hannah and Mary Ruth's characters were developed further. I'm looking forward to discovering whether she joins the Amish or leaves to become a teacher. As other reviewers have pointed out, many issues in this book could have been prevented if only the characters had communicated. But wouldn't this have been the situation a hundred or two years ago? In a sense, Amish novels are like historical novels. You have to suspend disblelief a little and accept that crisis often develop out of small problems that snowball out of control. As much as I felt sorry for Leah at the end of the book, I can only hope that Lewis has something better planned for her life that will appear in the final three books in this series. I have to say that this book was probably better than the first in the series as I felt that I got to know the characters more, so this is a 10/10.
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