Beneath the Summer Sun

(An Every Amish Season Novel #2)

Paperback, ebook, 

January 16, 2018

by Kelly Irvin

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan 
• ISBN-13: 978-0310348085

Jennie Troyer knows it’s time to remarry. Can she overcome a painful secret and open her heart to love?

 It’s been four years since Jennie’s husband died in a farming accident. Long enough that the elders in her Amish community think it’s time to marry again for the sake of her seven children. What they don’t know is that grief isn’t holding her back from a new relationship. Fear is. A terrible secret in her past keeps her from moving forward.

Mennonite book salesman Nathan Walker stops by Jennie’s farm whenever he’s in the area. Despite years of conversation and dinners together, she never seems to relax around him. He knows he should move on, but something about her keeps drawing him back.

 Meanwhile, Leo Graber nurtures a decades-long love for Jennie, but guilt plagues him—guilt for letting Jennie marry someone else and guilt for his father’s death on a hunting trip many years ago. How could anyone love him again—and how could he ever take a chance to love in return?

In this second book in the Every Amish Season series, three hearts try to discern God’s plan for the future—and find peace beneath the summer sun.

My thoughts:  BENEATH THE SUMMER SUN is set in Jamesport, Missouri, a real-life Amish community in northern Missouri. Kelly Irvin is the one who introduced me to this area when she went on a research trips several years ago and posted pictures.  I had to go visit the area for myself.  

Jennie is an abused woman, terrified to start over with a new man even though she's expected to remarry She has seven children, her oldest is fourteen and he's beginning to have anger issues like Jennie's deceased husband, but she's at a lose how to handle him. 

There are two men interested in Jennie, and both are sweet as anything. One is a talker and a bookworm, a real gentleman, but he's Mennonite. While he may be welcome in the community as a book salesman, but as a prospective groom for an Amish widow? Not so much.

Leo is the strong, silent type. He lost Jennie years ago and is suffering from acute guilt for his father's death.  I hurt for him. 

This is a love-triangle, which is frowned upon by some publishers, but it works. Both Leo and Nathan's point of view is included, and this reader cheered for first one then the other in the quest for Jennie's heart.  I couldn't decide who I wanted to win.  But the decision wasn't up to me and I was satisfied with the Happy Ever After ending,  A good read.

I was given a copy free. All opinions are my own.