Oh, me. What are you doing, me? What are you doing when you have an assignment due in less than a day?But I was saving this book for a rainy day, and I guess you can count the day before an assignment as a cyclone-grade sort of rainy day.And I don't regret nothing! No sir, I won't even when I have to rush through my assignment later, because I've still got a happy post-book daze.Technically, I give this book 4.5 or maybe 4.75 (goodreads, give us half stars to play with already, darnit). My impression: a sort of cross between the language/style of Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm with a great frontier romance backdrop ala Ellen O'Connell, with a slight hint of The Magic of Ordinary Days.Sigh. Happiness. I love those three things (so much like you will not believe), and those three things together is just amazing. bravo bravo. I got exactly what I wanted, and I'm somewhat relieved - having previously read another book (title escapes me) by Williamson that I didn't really enjoy. The melodrama was also a very welcome change after recently zooming my way through the fluffiness and predictability that is Dorothy Garlock's books, which I love, but in a different way.Hello great characters! Hello my dignified heroine, hello my traumatised handsome wounded gunslinger. (whhyyyy helllooo, my handsome gunslinger.) Here's to a great pair who sound so stereotyped when described, but don't seem so in the story. Here's to a gunslinger done right, who had to grow up hard and become (realistically) affected by his hard life, who searches for himself as much as he searches for a place to finally put down his roots and for someone to love. Here's to a heroine who struggles to reconcile her beliefs and her church and her feelings and who does it without going to the annoying dramatic extremes of Kinsale's heroine. Who figures out what she wants and then sticks to her decision, through the good and bad it brings to her life. Here's to a great heroine who did love her now deceased first husband (so rare in romance, like unicorns), who learns that there are second chances at love, who learns to recognise her flaws and her weaknesses. Ah, you two, I love you. For you, I'd give 10 stars. In fact, I'd give the characters 5 stars, and not just the two leads. There wasn't a big cast, but oh, boy, were they well written. From the heroine's son to the cynical, whiskey-addicted town doctor (in the few short scenes he is in, a cynic PTSD drunk with a heart....somewhere very deep down), his whore love-interest (sympathetic but not degradingly pitiful like most fancy-girls are written), to the rest of the amish community - everyone is characterised and developed well. No one has just one facet, even the villains of the story. Even the main bad guy's wife. Even his son. Isn't it wonderful?! Isn't it realistic?! It's simply divine. And I love the hero and the heroine so much that it bears repeating. They are amazing to the power of awesome.Why the 4.5? Why not 5, if I'm so in love? Man, that rushed ending. Plotwise, it was good - and really, my heart stopped at certain climatic moments - but I think it could have been extended another chapter or two to tie up some loose ends (the consequences of that gunfight, that was all, really? He throws away that belt, was that all, really? They live in the same community but she doesn't interact with the other Amish people, is that all, really? And the doctor, is that all, really?!?!). It felt as if the climax had an extremely short resolution, and it bothers me a little. There's a lot I wanted to know and not nearly enough chapters that covered it, but I'll take it, I guess. Because I loved this book.I hope the next Williamson is just as good, because it's now 1-1. And I need something new for a rainy day, now.
Admittedly, I didn't pay close enough attention to the description of this book. Had I even once pondered over the name Rachel Yoder, I would have realized fairly quickly that this was a book about an Amish community in 19th century Montana. As it was, however, I was a few pages in before I caught on. Being a strictly non-religious person (that's being kind, I detest organized religion in all forms), I contemplated putting this book down and starting something else. I'm quite glad I didn't. No, it didn't make me see the light, bring me closer to god, make me question my beliefs or my (lack of) faith, or anything else. What it did was make me respect Penelope Williamson's knack for storytelling and subtlety. She expertly crafted a tale in which the lines between beliefs are glaringly obvious, while the lines between human emotions are much less so. The reader gets to see inside the heads of several different characters, and what the reader finds is that the only thing separating the "Plain" people from their world of sinners is guilt and pride. Rachel Yoder is a pious woman, yes, but she's also a sympathetic, loving, and forgiving person, which is more than can be said for the rest of the people within the Plain community. When she looks at Cain, she doesn't see a dangerous, interloping sinner who should be shunned and forgotten about. She sees an injured, broken man in need of love and forgiveness. And interestingly, Cain, for all his worldly, "evil" ways, is much closer to the Christ-like ideals of organized religion than anyone within the Plain faith. Yes, he's killed people, but he's capable of recognizing that love and basic human charity are not limited to a select few. He's honorable, forgiving, tender, and stalwart. The level of hypocrisy and judgement within the Plain community, however, drove me up the wall. These are people who claim pride is a sin while simultaneously claiming they are god's "chosen people". Strangely, they don't see the contradiction inherent in such beliefs. They also refuse to recognize that their emotions are right on par with everyone else's; Noah Weaver is a prideful, boastful, angry, and envy-riddled man, but he at least recognizes these thoughts and emotions as sinful according to the tenets of his faith. His sister, Fannie, however, is a bitter, resentful, hateful shrew who spares no thought whatsoever to the fact that she is expressly going against her prescribed faith by fostering and harboring such feelings. Something I absolutely loved about this story is that it wasn't predictable. Things really could have gone any way, and several times I found myself thinking, "No, please tell me that's not how it's going to end!" I really wasn't able to instantly guess how things were going to turn out, but I was definitely pleased with the ending.A group of people in the grip of denial is a painful thing to watch, but reading about the budding relationship between Rachel and Cain makes the entire story worthwhile. Put in simple terms, this is a story about how one's religion does nothing to raise them above the rest of us. We are all human, and the only thing we should be striving for is a desire to meet each other somewhere in the middle.
What do You think about The Outsider (1997)?
Read this right after seeing the movie, which I loved. Tim Daly and Naomi Watts are excellent in the Showtime film, which is well made, and as I soon discovered, presents a more tightly constructed and satisfying story than the book. The book meanders in half a dozen different directions, dwelling far too long on a number of subplots instead of exploring more deeply the growing relationship between Rachel and Johnny. I also much prefer the climax of the movie to the book. Overall, it's an okay story, but I probably would not have finished it had I started it without having seen and loved the movie.
—Pam
Oana wrote: "A little clichéd and lame in some parts, but I am a fan of that, so I quite enjoyed it. And Johnny... well, you saw him, such a sight for sore eyes."And Johnny... well, you saw him, such a sight for sore eyes.Oh yeah, I saw him! ;)
—Oana
I love Penelope Williamson. Her books A Wild Yearning and Keeper of the Dream are two of my all time favourites.She is just such a great writer. Thoughtful, powerful and thorough. This book is not quite in the same class as the two above but is still something totally different and very wonderful. The Heroine is an Armish or "Plain" woman, Rachael Yoder and the Hero is a gunslinginger, killing machine called Johnny Cain. Totally miss-matched yet perfect for each other. He is unredeemable and she is totally faithful to her religion, and a mother of a great kid - Benjo - to boot. The story is told from several third person POV's but none of them are Johnny's, which upset me initially but as the book progressed I could understand how much powerful Ms Williamson made the book by omitting his POV. A great book. Different, quiet and thought provoking, a little slow in places, but worth it. Penelope Williamson is an author who's work is worth seeking out, all her novels have very different settings and characters, not just from each other, but from other authors. She is a treat.
—Renee
