Huckleberry Summer

by Jennifer Beckstrand

June 3, 2014 · Zebra

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This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Catherine Heloise. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Inspirational Romance category.

Here is Catherine Heloise's review:

The fun thing about RITA review challenges is that you get to read books that you would never have considered picking up otherwise. So when I looked down the list last week and saw a whole collection of Inspirational Romances, I thought, well, why not? I mean, I’m Christian, I love romances – I am the target market! Sold!

As this is the first Inspirational Romance I’ve read, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going in, other than a certain amount of prayer around the place, and regular references to God, at least in the minds of the characters. I definitely wasn’t expecting a bona fide miracle – divine intervention and the Voice of God – in Chapter 2! As an introduction to the genre, this was… striking. After that, things calmed down significantly on the God-side, and while God is indeed referenced quite often in passing, and there is a brief discussion of Amish theology later in the book, God made no further appearances as a character in this novel, which was a great relief to my feelings. I’m still not entirely sure what I think of miracles as a source of plot and character development in fiction. And I have no idea what a non-religious person would make of this novel. It’s a good story, written with charm and a lovely, ironic sense of humour, but God is quite unavoidable – and I think that is rather the point.

But let’s start at the start. Huckleberry Summer is the second novel in a series centering around an Amish community in Wisconsin. Specifically, it centres around the grandchildren of Anna and Felty Helmuth, who, in Anna’s opinion, need to get married. Fortunately, she knows just the spouse for each of them.

The grandchild in this story is Aden, a conservationist and an animal lover, who has, rather scandalously, been arrested several times for doing things like chaining himself to trees to prevent them being chopped down, or breaking into a neighbour’s yard to feed neglected animals. At the start of the book, he has a near-death experience – the aforementioned miracle – in which God quite literally rescues him from drowning, and tells him that ‘one thing is needful’. This is a quote from the story of Mary and Martha in the New Testament – when hard-working Martha complains that Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus rather than helping her, Jesus uses these words to explain that Mary is doing the right thing. If I have understood correctly, this is also the story that underpins the Amish doctrine of Gelassenheit, which is about yielding oneself to the will of God, and trusting God to do what is right, rather than trying to fix the world through one’s own actions. The theology of this is explained rather well later in the book. I disagree with it.

I apologise for all this theology in a book review, but it is actually relevant, because this approach to faith is why Aden is viewed, by the Amish community and by the novel itself, as good-hearted but wrong in his actions. Interfering in the lives of others, even for a good reason, shows a lack of faith in God, and is something he needs to stop doing in order to live peacefully in the community. I still disagree. Strongly. But that is the world of this book, and I think it needs to be understood for the story to work.

Our heroine is Lily Eicher, a very, very well-behaved, obedient and somewhat timid Amish girl who the Helmuths invite to work on their farm in a blatant move to throw her together with Aden. She is, however, rather horrified at the idea of working with someone who has been in jail, and her father is even less impressed. Lily is rather adorable, and she could so easily not have been. She is sweet and kind and takes the world very seriously, and she is determined to do the right thing at all times. She is also terrified of dogs – including Aden’s rather large dog – and of small children (or at least of having to babysit them), and has a slightly obsessive relationship with hand sanitiser. Still, she realises that Christian charity is no less than her duty:

All Lily wanted to do was practice her Christian charity on him.
And catch a glimpse of those irresistible eyes.
But mostly practice charity.

Oh, Lily. You aren’t fooling anyone.

While Anna Helmuth is determined that Lily is the perfect wife for Aden, Lily’s father utterly disapproves of him, pushing Lily to marry Tyler, the bishop’s son. This is the main source of conflict in the story. One thing I liked very much about this book was that Beckstrand did not take the easy way out here. It would have been easy to make Tyler a terrible person, or even just an unattractive one, but instead, he is absolutely lovely – sweet, kind and generous, and one of the first to befriend Aden when he arrives. While he is not above using the advantages that Lily’s father’s approval gives him in his courtship of Lily, he is ultimately a good friend to both Aden and Lily, even at his own expense. He’s a genuinely good guy, and I’m now going to have to read the next book in the series, because I want to see him happy. I liked it that the friendship between him and Aden is a very honest one, and goes both ways – one of the first things Aden does when he realises that Tyler is also courting Lily is to go to him openly and talk to him about it. Tyler isn’t happy to have a rival for his love, but the friendship is able to survive it.

Beckstrand also does a fine job of creating a sense of being embedded in the Amish community. Linguistically, she uses snatches of dialect and speech patterns that feel very consistent and give the novel a strong sense of place. I must admit, I find myself quite enamoured of the word ‘fancy’, which is used to describe anything that isn’t ‘plain’ and Amish, from power drills to vegetarian food. There is a sense of cultural mores that go all the way down – it’s not Amishness painted on the surface of a normal small town community. Jennifer Beckstrand has visited Amish communities and interviewed many Amish people, as well as having Amish friends who help keep her facts straight, and this depth of knowledge shows.

The authorial voice is also very appealing – there is an affectionate irony and humour in Beckstrand’s writing, for example when Lily meets Aden’s friend, Jamal:

Lily had never shaken hands with a black man before. When it happened, it was quite uneventful.

Or when Tyler and Aden discuss Lily’s obsession with hand sanitiser:

“But she is really cute the way she carries hand sanitizer with her everywhere. Maybe I should try harder with her dat.”

Tyler slapped his gloves against his leg. His eyes danced as he looked at Aden. “She has four different flavours.”

“Of hand sanitizer?”

“Vanilla is my favourite.”

Strawberry was Aden’s favourite. But he didn’t say so.

I think hand sanitizer is being used as a surrogate for something. But it would be impolite to say so, in a book where the author is perfectly capable of writing a hand-holding scene which makes this reader’s heart beat faster. And speaking of which, when Aden kissed Lily about a quarter of the way through the book, I was so shocked I actually gasped. Fortunately for my nerves, nothing racier occurred during the course of the novel. Well, aside from some hugging (swoon!). All joking aside, I really was impressed at the sensuality and tension that Beckstrand managed to infuse into the simple act of Aden taking Lily’s hand.

Lily’s relationship with her father is drawn very well, and makes my hair stand on end, because it is a brilliant example of a relationship that looks loving and affectionate even to those inside it, but is actually quite toxic in its effects. We are told early on that she is a good, obedient girl, and other characters hint that her father is particularly strict, but Lily’s own relationship with him seems very positive, and she views the love and respect her father shows her mother as the model for what she wants in her own life. As the book continues, though, it becomes clear that this dynamic is less idyllic. Lily’s father is not emotionally abusive, exactly, nor is he cruel or unkind when her friendship with Aden leads her into strife part way through the book. Instead, he is kind and forgiving of her weakness – and this incident becomes another reason why Lily should trust her father’s judgment over her own. It’s incredibly chilling, because it is so manipulative, and has a powerful negative effect on Lily, and yet it is easy to see both why she doesn’t recognise this behaviour as abusive and why her father really does think he is doing what is best for her. Altogether, it’s a really well-drawn portrayal of a dysfunctional relationship and how that can play out in a culture where obedience is valued so strongly.

The whole relationship between Aden and Lily is sweet. In the early part of the book, Aden decides quickly that he isn’t interested in Lily, but since she is working for his grandparents, it’s important that the two of them can be friendly. I did enjoy his sense of humour and the way he draws her out of her shell – Lily is a very anxious, very careful person, and Aden is both gentle with her anxiety, and a little teasing over it. At one point, Aden swims out into a lake to rescue a lost canoe, and Lily is absolutely terrified that he will drown. He tells her to turn her back, and then gives her a running commentary as he swims:

“Lily, I am now swimming to the middle of the pond. My head is above water and that’s why you can hear me yelling…. I am now dragging the boat to shore… You will notice that my head is still above water…”

… and continues it after he gets out of the pond…

“I am now attempting to don my trousers, but it is slow going. They are soaked. Now my shirt. It’s a little easier, although it’s always difficult to stretch a shirt over my massive chest.”

Bet you weren’t expecting that in an Inspie. And in front of his grandparents, too…

In the latter half of the book, when things get difficult, I found myself having a lot of sympathy for both of them. Aden really does not deserve the treatment he gets from Lily and from the community, and yet I can completely understand how difficult it is for Lily to get out from under that weight of obedience and being a good daughter, and to discern what is the right way to behave. This is resolved in a way that strikes me as utterly realistic and in keeping with the characters of all concerned.

Overall, I really enjoyed Huckleberry Summer, despite disagreeing with some of its philosophy – I thought Aden’s desire to fix the world’s wrongs was an excellent character trait, even if he was going about it unwisely, and having him be told, effectively, to cease trying made me quite angry, and dragged this book down from a clear A+ to an A. Having said that, I will certainly be reading the sequel, because I need to know that Tyler is happy. Hopefully, this can happen without any annoying theological moments – or indeed, any miracles, because I’m still not convinced that God needs to be an active character in any novel. I’m not sure that this book will turn me into a reader of Inspies, but I really am glad I had the chance to read and review it – it was a really delightful story, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Lily and Aden.