The Heirloom

By: Beverly Lewis

Narrated by: Libby McKnight

This heartwarming prequel to The Shunning is a tender story of love, belonging, and the courage to move forward.

After her widowed father remarries, nineteen-year-old Clara Bender is no longer needed to help run his household. Marriage seems like her best hope of moving out, but there are few young men in her tiny Indiana Amish community. When she comes across letters from her mother's aunt Ella Mae Zook, she sets off to visit Lancaster County's Hickory Hollow to decide where her future lies.

Ella Mae is not quite ready to move from the farmhouse where she and her recently deceased husband spent over fifty happy years, but her children are eager to resettle her, making Clara's visit seem like an answer to prayer. The two women form a warm bond while restoring an heirloom wedding quilt and sharing their lives, with Ella Mae confiding about a tragedy from her courting years. Eventually, Ella Mae suggests Clara stay for the summer, allowing Ella Mae more time with her and giving Clara an opportunity to meet the area's eligible young men. But when the unexpected happens, will Clara find where her heart truly belongs?

©2023 Beverly Lewis (P)2023 Recorded Books

Sweet story!

The story was great but the narrator was choppy and difficult to listen to. A slight increase in speed helped.

Love this

I have not been able to stop listening. It’s the best. I say this about all her books. But I couldn’t stop this one starting the next I was soon as I’m done.

I loved every minute of it.

What a wonderful story for me to come back to, adding all I have in my library of Beverly Lewis. Now to find another I may have missed. There were moments that they heard guitar playing and they were love songs. Sounds like the possible next book being the Shunning. By Beverly Lewis.
Marilyn

Good Story--Not So Good Narration

The story is pure Beverly Lewis, with her wonderful, descriptive language and character development. She brings the reader right into the culture to where you can almost smell the bread baking! But then there's the narration. Part of the problem for me is that the narrator doesn't seem excited about the book. Her tone is somewhat mechanical and stilted. But my biggest frustration with the narrator is her mispronunciation of places. The story is set in PA. Clearly the characters who live there would know how to pronounce the names of places like Lancaster and Ephrata! Being a Pennsylvania girl, hearing these places mispronounced just grates on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard! Please, audiobook publishers, teach your narrators how to properly pronounce names and places, or edit their work more carefully!

The Amish at their best!

Very well done! Did well at representing the Amish I thought! Very touching story indeed!