ary Ellis is my favorite Amish fiction author. Great at storytelling, she balances several interrelated stories at once.

Abby is an unlicensed midwife who gets called out on emergency delivery. Everything goes wrong, she has never the woman who is in labor before, the doctor is already on an emergency and even though she asked Nathan Fisher to call the paramedics, he does not do it, His wife had refused to go to the hospital. The woman's life is lost but the infant has been saved. Abby is arrested. The judge insists on keeping her locked up in jail.

Abigail's sister, Catherine comes to take care of Abby's young daughter and son. At first, Abby's husband too much out of Catherine and both of them find it difficult to get along. Catherine's curiosity is stirred when she learns of the mysterious man who lives in a cabin at the back of the couple's property.

Nathan's aunt comes to help with the new baby Abraham and very soon sees that he will not pick ip the baby, she know that him staying mired in his grief is harming the baby,

Love, forgiveness and acceptance flow into the story and healing begins. ( )

Abigail loved helping deliver babies. Since she could only go so far in school she was an unlicensed midwife who worked with the local doctor. Unfortunately the one night the doctor is needed most, he is unable to help. Abigail goes to help a young mother deliver her baby. She tries to get the mother to go to the hospital, but she refuses. Abigail delivers the baby, but loses the mother.

When the authorities find out that Abigail was not licensed, she is arrested for practicing medicine without a license and several other things. To add to her pain, her father, a bishop won’t come to the jail to see her, she can’t make bail because the community won’t help. At this point I probably would have felt betrayed by everyone. Abigail spends her time reading her Bible and praying. At home her sister has come to stay in her house to help Abigail’s husband with the children and the household duties. While helping out she meets a young man who works on the farm. Everyone thinks Isaiah is mentally not all there. In reality he is deaf and very smart. Catherine is aware of this and attracted to him.

This is a great story. There are themes of love, forgiveness and finding God in the midst of your trials. Lessons of learning that God accepts us just the way we are where we are. Mary Ellis is great at creating such realistic stories that tug at the heartstrings yet have so many hidden messages and lessons that we all need to hear. You could never say her stories are preachy because they are definitely not. This is one Amish fiction author you really need to read. ( )

I swear this is like the fourth book about midwifery I've read this year. I went from maybe reading one book about the subject every 3 or 4 years to 4 in just a few months. I wonder if this is the hot new trend in literature?

This was an interesting book about what happens when something goes wrong during the birthing process and the midwife is charged with endangering the patient and also using a drug they are not licensed to give. I found this book quite relevant in my reading because just a few days before starting it, there had been a news article in the paper about a midwife in our area who was now facing charges for the death of the child. This part of the story was very interesting because I felt that Abigail wisely balanced her Amish beliefs with the accordance of the law. She didn't resist obeying the rules of the judge or jail yet still kept her faith afloat. I found this very refreshing because it showed that at least in her sect, while God is the most important, it is also important to obey the law. She gives in to wearing the uniform set by the jail as well as allows herself to watch TV in order to better bond with her cellmate. It got a little too Christian-y at one point in regards to her witnessing to her new friend. I understand her enthusiasm but it just felt a little too well played out. By the end of the book though, the story seemed to lose its focus on what she had done an d the outcome.

The second part of the book rather baffled me. Abigail's sister Catherine comes to their town to help take of her children while she' s in jail. While Cat is there, she discovers that there is a young man who lives by himself and keeps to himself in her sister's family's back yard. It turns out the man is deaf and Cat, who has had training with the deaf, wants to help him. Her attempts at teaching and then falling for him, though while a bit unbelievable, was not a problem. What rather annoyed me is that Abigail and her husband seem to think that Isaiah is simple minded and can never be taught to read, write, speak or anything. It's quite insulting and down right ignorant. They both continually tell Cat that Isaiah can never learn anything and seem wary that he could be a normal part of society. The part that really rankled me is that all this time they seem to think that he's a believer simply because he bows his head at prayer. It never dawned on them that he was just mimicking what they were doing because he couldn't hear! They never thought at all to help him with his faith or any other interaction at all. He seems to be an outcast in their group so in all honesty, I have no idea why he is even Amish as he probably doesn't even know what it means to be Amish. This part of the book didn't seem to really flow as well.

It's a bit sad that that half of the book was a downer to me because otherwise Abigail's story makes for an interesting read. If the other books in the series don't show that kind of ignorance, I'll be more than willing to read more from the author. ( )

Amish midwife tries to save a mother during the delivery of her child. The child lives and the mother dies. The Amish midwife is placed in jail for illegally using a medicine she is not licensed to use. ( )

First I want to thank Mary Ellis the author for sending me this autographed copy of Abigal's New Hope for me to review.

Abigale Graber is an Amish wife and mother of two little ones. She also is a midwife for some of the women, and when one night a new man that has just moved into the area came knocking on her door and needed her to come to his wife that was in labor. No one else was available so she went and the young woman was already bleeding really bad, but Abigale delivered the healthy baby boy but the young woman died. What else could she do she called 911 but by the time they got there it was too late. The young father got his aunt to come and care for the baby.

Meanwhile word got out that Abigale was not a licenced midwife and that she was supposed to help someone else to deliver babies. Two patrol cars came to her house and took her to jail where she stayed for a little while. This was the first time an Amish woman had even been arrested for being a midwife but the state of Ohio saw it different. She used her time to read her Bible and to Pray as she sit in jail. Her father was a bishop and he had not come to see her, but her sister had come to care for the two children and to care for the house while she was in jail. The bail was set to half a million dollars and the Amish people did not believe in putting up their farms for bail money as this had never come about before. Will she have to server time in the woman's prison or will the judge and her lawyer get her off with a lesser sentence?

This is really a different kind of Amish book than most of the others, it deals with something that none of the other Amish writers have written about. I think anyone that reads this book will really enjoy it.