Today is the last day for the Summer Reading Blog Tour. I hope you've enjoyed browsing this virtual library and have discovered new titles and authors to enjoy.
Today we meet Louellen Friesen, a 25-year-old Amish wife trapped in a loveless marriage, in Marsha Hubler's Amish/Mennonite novel, Love Song for Louellen:
1. What is your name? Mrs. Louellen Friesen
2. What one word best describes you? Forgiven
3. How do you first become involved in this novel? I make my entrance on the first page. I am cleaning house for an “English” doctor, David McAndrew, and, God forgive me, I have strong feelings for this man even though I’m married to Eli Friesen.
4. What worries you? I am childless, which is a blight in the Mennonite community. I worry that I’ll never have children.
Continue reading . . .
Book Description
Twenty-five-year-old Amish Louellen Friesen
finds herself falling in love with forty-year-old Englishman Dr. David
McAndrew, a widower with two children, for whom she cleans house
regularly in Mapletown, Snyder County, Pennsylvania. There’s only one
problem. Louellen is already married.
Well past the “marrying age” at twenty-two, Louellen Bidleman had wed Amish man Eli Friesen three years prior, mostly because of pressure from her family. Eli, also in his mid-twenties and in danger of being “passed over,” had married Louellen for one main reason, to have sons.
Louellen has some love for Eli, but because of her church vows, sets out to be the best wife and mother she can be, especially when God blesses them with little ones. However, after three years, there are no children. Louellen is devastated, and Eli becomes bitter, feeling trapped in a marriage that has produced no offspring even though he knows that he has the medical problem, not his wife. Although he treats Louellen civil in public, at home he ignores her needs, and their wedded life is nothing but a disappointment to both.
What should Louellen do? Turn her back on her husband and her Amish Ordnung? Should she leave, become “English,” and marry Dr. McAndrew, a man who has promised her the moon?
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