Since I’m off from work this week, I went ahead and finished A Cousin’s Prayer. The book was somewhat entertaining, but, I felt the story lacked believability. Reason being, there were so many accidents, calamities, maladies and such that it took away from the storyline. Everything from paper cuts needing stitches, people miscarrying, dying, getting hit in the head, passing out, etc. occurred in the story. It seemed like every few chapters there was an accident or illness of some sort happpening in the novel. It got a bit tiresome reading about those incidents after awhile.
HOWEVER, the author did do a great job with showing we need to accept God’s gift of salvation in order to overcome all of our problems. Katie’s salvation scene was very moving, and that’s the most important lesson in a Christian book. I did get more involved with the story during the second half than the first.
If you want to read something that doesn’t require much thought, effort, or analysis, then you should read this story. Also, I could see this story appealing to young adults because I think most of the main characters are in their twenties.
One unusual aspect of the story was the businesses owned by the main characters. Freeman owns a bike repair shop and Katie helps her mom in a stamp shop? I’d never heard of a stamp shop until I read this book. It appears similiar to a stationary store? It seemed like a bulk of the shop’s income came from the sell of rubber stamps, which I found highly unusual. Why? Not sure. I know about rubber stamps but didn’t realize that people made a living selling rubber stamps in various forms in a place called a stamp shop. When I hear the term stamp shop, I think of a place that sells postage stamps – a place where stamp collectors would go to add new and unusual postage stamps to their collection.
The bicycle repair shop seemed a bit odd to me, too. I haven’t seen a full-blown bicycle repair shop since the seventies. Since I’m not much of a rider, it’s possible they still exist, though. I have seen bike sales shops, and they offer repairs, too. But I’m assuming since this is an Amish community, a bike repair shop would be used more since the Amish might have a use for bikes more than Englishers?
I still need to blog about part II of my Lancaster County trip, and I plan on doing that shortly.