Blood Of The Prodigal by P.L. Gaus

Oh Readers,

This author, P.L. Gaus has a grip on the Amish community unlike almost any I have read. This book was amazing! If you don't care for most Amish stories, please try this one. If you have never read a book about the Amish, or with Amish characters, read this one. I do not think you will be disappointed unless you just can't stand to read a book with any mysteries in it.

I throughly enjoyed this well written, well paced mystery. It is quite refreshing to see how accurately, gently, yet very precisely the Amish were treated and portrayed in this book. His understanding, and depth of respect for these people shows in each page of Blood Of The Prodigal.

The story itself is infused with facts and truths about the Amish culture, life style, and how they serve and follow God. Beautiful rural settings are described with detail, even down to where roads brach off and take a twist or turn. Sunrises, sunsets, and how cold your breath can be when milking in the morning are very accurate and well written that I wasn't sure I didn't have to get up and milk in the morning again!

In the mists of this peaceful culture resides Bishop Miller. In an unprecedented step he asks two trusted outsiders, English, to help him with a situation that reaches far beyond the borders of his Order. His oldest son, Jonah Miller was drawn out into the world. Out into sin, into those things which so many fall prey to already, drink, women and wild living. So rebellious was his spirit that his own Father, the Bishop Miller had to put the Mite on him, to ban him until he could or would return home a repentant and obedient son. But the first return of Jonah was not to reunite with his family, but to come and kidnap his 10 year old son, Jeremiah.

Blood of the Prodigal is the story of a Professor, a Pastor, and a Sheriff all working to find one child who is missing, and to bring the prodigal son home. It is not, however, just an Amish story. It is a story of the deep destruction that sin causes, the pain of the rift when we are separated from The Father, and a story of love and redemption.

Carol

This week, the  Christian Fiction Blog Allianceis introducingBlood of the ProdigalPlume; Reprint edition (September 28, 2010)byP.L. Gaus
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Paul took an interest in writing fiction in 1993, and with the advice and encouragement of author Tony Hillerman, he began writing mystery novels set among the Amish in Holmes County, Ohio. The first of Gaus's mysteries, Blood of the Prodigal, An Ohio Amish Mystery, was published by Ohio University Press in June of 1999, and a total of six novels have appeared in this series: Broken English, 2000, Clouds Without Rain, 2001, Cast a Blue Shadow, 2003, A Prayer for the Night, 2006, and Separate from the World, 2008.  A seventh novel in the series is in preparation.

All of Paul's stories have now been republished by Plume (a division of Penguin Group USA) as The Amish-Country Mysteries, and these editions have been embraced by Christian retailers such as CBD.com, Family Christian Stores, and LifeWay.  Future mysteries in the series will still first be published in hard cover editions, as The Amish-Country Mysteries by Ohio University Press, with Plume bringing out the soft cover editions some time later.

Paul and his wife Madonna still travel frequently in Holmes County.  He lectures widely about Amish culture at libraries, bookstores, literary societies, and the like, and his books have been featured at Book Expo America and similar professional shows around the country. Paul's novels have been reviewed in prominent journals and newspapers, for instance, Kirkus Reviews, ForeWord Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, Ohioana Quarterly, and the New York Times Book Review.

ABOUT THE BOOK 

For Jonah Miller, shunned by his Old Order sect and cast into the wider world, the summer begins with his decision to kidnap his ten-year-old son from the home of the bishop who had exiled Miller a decade earlier.  In his desperation to retrieve the boy, the bishop appeals for help to the only "English" men the sect would ever approve.

Professor Michael Branden and Pastor Caleb Troyer had been looking forward to the kind of sleepy rural summer they had enjoyed as boyhood friends growing up in the small college town of Millersburg.  Instead, they plunge into the normally closed Amish culture to find the boy.  When the kidnapping leads to murder, they can no longer keep the case from the law.  Working sometimes at cross purposes with his friend Sheriff Bruce Robertson, Professor Branden digs through the past to uncover truths that many would prefer to leave undisturbed.  Little does he suspect that even the anguished bishop, torn by an insoluble moral dilemma, tragically does not tell everything he knows about the case.  Suddenly the vast tangle of Amish and Mennonite settlements that sprawl among several thousand small farms and homesteads seems less bucolic than unknowable and impenetrable.

As they inquire delicately among the peaceful ones, Branden and Troyer learn that the troubles of Jonah Miller began far earlier than the kidnapping, with his Rumschpringe - the customary wild year before taking Amish vows.  But his grand Rumschpringe had exploded into a decade of drugs, whiskey, and women, in the company of people no Amish person should meet.

In the tradition of Tony Hillerman, P. L. Gaus depicts a culture that successfully stands outside the mainstream yet interacts with it in complex and fascinating ways, a culture that is every bit as susceptible to the undertow of the human spirit as any we might know.

If you would like to read the first chapter of Blood of the Prodigal, go HERE

The book link is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452296463