Made with Love

Includes recipes--I've already tried out a couple.

Tricia Goyer and Sherry Gore have collaborated to bring a sweet Amish novel with lots of recipes, lots of trials, lots of growth in the characters, and lots of pie--we can't forget the pie.

Lovina is the oldest of five girls and she has always had a dream of opening a pie shop. Her mother has always had a dream of having her girls married off. Sometimes dreams collide and sometimes dreams intertwine. It takes overcoming a prejudice, forgiving a past, forging a future, generously giving, and working tirelessly to make everyone's dreams happen.

Noah is a young contractor who has an eye for treasure in people's trash--his specialty is salvage reclamation. He is also mentor for his nephew, Mose, and Mose's friends Gerald and Atlee--young men on rumspringa who have gotten themselves in a bit of trouble.

When Lovina finds the perfect place for her pie shop, Noah offers to do the construction work in exchange for salvaging through the warehouse Lovina buys.

One of the most exciting scenes in the book is where Lovina is asking her parents to co-sign a loan for the warehouse and her father refuses to co-sign. He has other things in mind, and he hates being in debt to anyone!

A tender scene is when Lovina asks her sister, Hope, to fix two urns with flowers to go on either side of the front door. Hope has felt left out of the process of getting the warehouse ready. Lovina assumed Hope didn't want to participate and Hope assumed Lovina didn't want her help.

A rewarding scene is when a builder asks Mose to do some construction work on a house he is remodeling. Mose is recognized for his own talent and his own abilities. It's a culmination of a lot of work on Noah's part.

Here are some of the concepts woven into the warp and woof of the fabric of the book:
a. The past is past. God has removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west, we do no one any favors by rehearsing and rehashing those sins.
b. Communities need connections.
c. We cannot impose our own dreams onto someone else. We do not know for sure who the author of those dreams is, and going against God will do no favors.
d. We might be the answer to someone else's prayers.
e. It may take a long time for prayers to be answered, but we are doubly blessed if we live to see those answers, and triply blessed to become part of the answer.

Made with Love meets all my criteria for five stars, two thumbs up, and a slice of pie.

My thanks to Harvest House Publishers for allowing me to read and review this book. Can't wait to try more of the recipes.

*To all my favorite Amish authors: so many recipes require a fair dab of sugar in them and I can't always adjust the recipe to work without sugar. This makes me sad since I am diabetic and I have to be very careful about my sugar intake to the point I have eliminated it from my diet as much as possible.