The Captive Heart
This second book in the Daughters of Caleb Bender series, about an Amish family that immigrates, in 1921, to Paradise Valley, in Mexico, is even better than the first. It would be easy to make the assumption that a book about Amish settlers would have little action beyond the tilling of fields and the raising of barns, but this story is so well-written that it elicits powerful emotions in the reader.
Miriam, the seventh of Caleb’s eleven children, loves her family and is proud of her heritage, yet she cannot deny her growing attraction to Domingo, a Nahua native, who works for her father. Miriam knows that marriage to Domingo is forbidden, for he is an outsider and a warrior, yet her heart yearns for him nevertheless.
The bandits that roam the hills, led by the ex-revolutionary soldier known as El Pantera, are determined to wreak their revenge on Caleb, while Caleb and his Amish neighbors are equally determined to never strike another — not even to protect the lives of their families. When three of Caleb’s children disappear, Domingo and Luke (Rachel’s fiancé) set out to find them and attempt a rescue.
This is a wonderful book that I heartily recommend.
