The Half-Stitched Amish Quilting Club

February 13, 2012
Popular Amish specialist Brunstetter (Kentucky Brothers series) offers a twist on Amish: a group of “English” (i.e., non-Amish) people take a quilting class from Amish widow Emma Yoder. The students all have problems in their lives that they inevitably bring to the class, which quickly functions as a support group as they—sometimes reluctantly—hear one another out. They are unsubtly diverse: a black preacher’s wife, a Hispanic widower who is a single dad, a biker working off a DUI, a goth young adult, a bickering suburban couple. Brunstetter’s fans will likely ignore the shortcomings of the novel (clunky dialogue like “Do you see that colorful Amish quilt hanging on the line in the yard across the road?”) and have some fun as their favorite character resolves his or her crisis with a stitch in time.