Whispers of a New Dawn

Title: WHISPERS OF A NEW DAWN

Author: Murray Pura

Publisher: Harvest House Books

April 2013

ISBN:  978-0736951708

Genre: Historical / Amish

Whenever the sun sets in one part of your world, it always rises again in another.

When Murray Pura's The Wings of Morning was released, one of his rave reviews came from Romantic Times magazine: "Pura has created one of the finest stories of Amish fiction I have ever read....The reader will be applauding the exceptional writing and the cast of characters demands an encore performance."

Here is that encore performance.

In the third book in his Snapshots of History series, Murray brings back Jude and Lyyndaya Whetstone, the beloved lead characters in The Wings of Morning.

The year is 1941 and Jude and Lyyndy, with their adult daughter, Rebecca, are summoned to far-off, exotic Honolulu where Rebecca, a flyer like her father, meets a likeable young pilot. The two enjoy a friendship that seems to be turning into something more serious.....until Sunday, December 7, 1941 dawns on the Hawaiian Islands.

Readers who love the simplicity of the Amish, a good romance, and a dramatic historical setting are in for a treat with Whispers of a New Dawn.  Book Three in the Snapshots of History series.

Fans of Mr. Pura will want to read the other two books in Snapshots in History series, The Face of Heaven and The Wings of Morning.

Like some of the other reviewers mentioned, Mr. Pura did cross some lines with this, and the historical information, while at times interesting, did border on information dumps at others. It seems to be a real stretch of my imagination to equate Amish and WWII fighter pilots, even though the family left the Amish before Rebecca is born.

Generally, I enjoy WWII stories. I enjoy Amish stories. I don’t enjoy them thrown into a blender, mixed well, and served with ice. And that is what this felt like to me. A little stir to mix them, as Ms. Younts did with her recent book, Promise to Return, works for me. This didn’t.

Mr. Pura is a stellar writer, and has quite a lot of fans, so it might be me. His style and voice are unique and different, adding a different flavor to both the WWII and  the Amish books already on the market. You might enjoy WHISPERS OF A NEW DAWN. $13.99. 354 pages. 3 stars.