The author’s exploration of Amish culture ventures into realms not often traveled by other writers: Spousal abuse in a closed community. As the first book in her new series of families of honor, I wonder if the subject matter of the other books will be as topical as this one. I hope so.

With stars in her eyes, young Lucy marries handsome Paul Troyer only to find him to be mentally and physically abusive. But no matter how black her bruises, the people in her community ignore his treatment of her, so she becomes quiet and subservient. When he is killed from a fall in the barn, she is thankful and ashamed that she can’t grieve for him.

When Lucy is asked by her friend Mattie to come help during her chemotherapy, Lucy agrees, getting on a train from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Jacob’s Crossing, Ohio. On the train, she meets other Amish travelers, Calvin Weaver, his little sister Katie, and their Uncle John. Like Paul, Calvin is a large, handsome man, which makes Lucy uneasy around him.

Calvin has his own reasons for being leery of Lucy. His betrothed recently ran away to marry one of his friends, leaving only a letter telling him goodbye. So both Calvin and Lucy understandably circle around each other carefully.

However, Lucy is impressed with how Calvin gently treats his much younger sister, and Calvin admires Lucy’s forbearance with Katie’s incessant personal questions. When their train is derailed and Lucy drops her diary in which she exuberantly describes how happy she is with her freedom and how she is thankful to be free of Paul, Calvin pockets the diary intending to return it to Lucy.

In the confusion and with a slight head wound, Calvin forgets about the book after everyone is boarded onto busses for a layover in Toledo until another train arrives to take them to their destination. After Calvin gets stitches for his wound, Lucy agrees to go out and see the zoo with him and Katie.

She is stunned and frightened when Calvin strides away from them and begins yelling at the driver of a horse-drawn carriage. She sees not a man from a farm community incensed with the treatment of a horse, but someone with a hair-trigger temper like her late husband. Thus a wall that seems fairly impenetrable is erected between them.

Since this is a romance, Lucy and Calvin eventually get together, but not until Lucy understands why Calvin was so angry, Calvin understands why his fiancé ran away with his friend, and why Lucy feels the way she does about Paul. Gray’s knack of depicting the Amish as regular people, not a collection of strange sect followers, makes all of this understandable and believable.

In addition to the story about Lucy and Calvin are a number of subplots including Lucy’s friend’s ordeal with chemotherapy, the friend’s mother’s acceptance of her daughter’s condition, the burgeoning love of Lucy’s friend and a neighbor, and Uncle John’s reemergence into Amish life after thirty years outside it. Unfortunately, all these additional threads dilute the story of Lucy and Calvin and skim the surface of the interesting peripheral stories, especially the one revolving around Uncle John. Each could easily make an interesting book in itself.

Ultimately this gentle story feels a little overcrowded with plotlines, even though it wonderfully conveys the character of a people and the similarity between their lives and the rest of American society. I eagerly await reading the next book in the series.