In which trek reviews The Daughters of Lancaster County

I recently read the Daughters of Lancaster County series by Wanda E Brunstetter. In order, they are The Storekeeper's Daughter,The Quilter's Daughter,and The Bishop's Daughter.

Daughters of Lancaster County series

The three novels have also been re-released in a single volume.

Single volume collection

Most of this series takes place within the Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, although portions do occur in other places, such as Ohio and the Pacific Northwest.

Brunstetter gets the action started with the unsolved kidnapping of one-year old Zach Fisher and the resulting guilt and blame game between his eldest sister, Naomi, and their father, Abraham. The circumstances of little Zach's kidnapping are believable. Naomi is watching him while tending the family's road-side root beer stand when she hears a loud crash and outcry from the house. Without thinking, she dashes back to the house, fearing that her younger sisters are hurt. She leaves Zach on the picnic table with the "English" man who was buying root beer. By the time she deals with the crisis indoors and remembers that she left her brother attended by a stranger, it is too late: the man is gone and Zach with him.

This event and its aftermath forms the central plot and tension of all three volumes. The reader is taken along a twenty-year tale of pain and loss.

I did finish out the series as all three books were very fast, easy reads and I read them while I was walking and prepping meals. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed in them individually and collectively.

I feel that there are major problems with the plot devices employed. A major character, engaged to be married, lost her fiancé and swore off men forever - or at least until it was convenient for the furtherance of the story. She fell in love again and lived happily ever after. Fine. Why did a second major character have to follow exactly the same path - engaged, fiancé dies, resigns herself to a life-long spinsterhood, finds a new man, and, well, you know the rest because you just read it already.

It seemed to me that the characters in this series had about the world's worst run of bad luck, too. About every time a person fell or tripped, they lost consciousness and required immediate medical attention and then there were the two shop fires - on the same street, and a variety of other major and minor catastrophes.

The third book, in particular, was very frustrating towards the end. Every time that the main male character was about to bare his soul, the conversation was conveniently hijacked by the arrival of a third person or by circumstances. The big secret remains hidden until the very end of the story when all is revealed and everyone moves on to the land of "happily ever after". While I understand that books in this genre tend towards happy endings, I found that the tying up of the loose ends was just too "pat" and tidy, just not credible.

Sadly, I don't foresee myself reading more of this author: the other series of hers which I started is pretty much written from the same boilerplate.