Woodsmall's Amish heroine is naive Hannah Lapp, who, as the novel begins, accepts the marriage proposal of her childhood friend, Paul Waddell. But Paul is a Mennonite--and, almost worse, a college man. He embraces such corrupt modernisms as gasoline engines and the Internet. To outsiders, the differences between Amish and Mennonites may seem subtle, but that's not the case for Hannah's Old Order father, and all hell breaks loose. Woodsmall's first novel, which will more than likely beget a series, seems a worthy successor--or companion--to Beverly Lewis' popular stories of the Pennsylvania Amish.
