Promise to Keep

Joe is on his way home from his stint the South Pacific theater of war in WWII. He plans to see his sister, his wife's best friend, and his daughter. He is not sure how he is going to be able to care for his daughter, who, according to Esther (his wife's best friend), is deaf. She has been teaching Daisy sign language so that she has a way to communicate with others.

Esther knows that when Joe comes home, she is going to have to relinquish Daisy to her father, even though she's grown quite attached to the little girl. To make matters worse, Esther's father (she was told he died when she was just a child) returns and stirs up many old memories and she just can't quite forgive him.

Daisy herself goes through a trauma or two, but her indomitable spirit wins out overall. There is a time when it was thought that Daisy was just simple minded and should have been institutionalized, but Esther reached beyond initial prejudices and figured out that Daisy was truly deaf. Because of her work with Daisy, she also spends a lot of time with Joe and falling in love with Joe--the only problem is that Joe is not Amish, and Esther knows the heartache left behind when someone leaves the church to live in the English world--particularly Joe's late wife, Leah.

I found this book to be a hard-to-put-down read. I relished the love Esther had for Daisy and the work she put into teaching Daisy to communicate. She was a terrific mother-figure for Daisy and a wonderful friend for Joe.

Elizabeth Byler Younts has created a thought-provoking story with some ideas that are worth pondering, especially in regard to rules artificially enforced on us.

Five Stars, Two Thumbs Up, and a .

My thanks to Howard Books for allowing me to read and review this book.