Ours for a Season ~ Review

Ours for a Season
By Kim Vogel Sawyer

Marty Hirschler has always wanted to be a mother but her dream is not to be. Her pain and longing has made her life in Pine Hill, Indiana, almost unbearable as friends and family continue to grow their own families. Her discontent is driving a wedge between her and her husband Anthony. And her faith has suffered as a result of this unanswered prayer.

When Marty's childhood friend asks Marty and Anthony to leave Indiana for a short-term job in Kansas, Marty feels that this is the chance she needs to heal her broken heart. And the chance to reconnect, in person, with Brooke after all these years is worth the time she'll be away from the familiar.

Brooke Spalding is a woman who knows what she wants and she's determined to turn every opportunity she can into a profit. Brooke needs no one in her life, her childhood convinced her of that. She's going to turn an old ghost town, Eagle Creek, into a multimillion-dollar resort and she wants Anthony to handle the construction portion of the restoration. But just as she is on the cusp of realizing her dream of being able to retire by 40, she is hit with a devastating medical diagnosis - cancer.

With Brooke's need for assistance during this time of illness, Marty begins to see that her childless state may actually be a blessing in disguise. But with any restoration project, there are always unforeseen issues to deal with. When a trespasser is discovered they find a teen runaway who was in a situation that made running her only hope of escape. Trafficking is something that Marty and Anthony had never experienced in their Old Order Mennonite life and it opens their eyes to a need that may be one that they can fill.

Ours for a Season is an engaging and moving story as Marty, Anthony, and Brooke all go through this time of trial. I like how this chance offers all to reexamine their lives and grow into better people. I really feel that the underlying theme of children (biological or not) are in our lives for just a season before they grow into a season of their own.

I received this book from the publisher through their book launch program.

About the Book:
An Old Order Mennonite couple's vows and beliefs are challenged in this stirring contemporary novel for fans of Cindy Woodsmall or Shelley Shepherd Gray.
 
Anthony and Marty Hirschler are part of an Old Order Mennonite community in Pine Hill, Indiana. The couple has grown apart since a doctor confirmed they would never have children. Marty longs to escape the tight-knit area where large families are valued, and the opportunity to do so arises when her childhood friend, Brooke Spalding, resurfaces with the wild idea of rebuilding a ghost town into a resort community. Brooke hires Anthony to help with the construction, drawing the Hirschlers away from Indiana and into her plan, and then finds herself diagnosed with cancer. Moral complications with Brooke's vision for a casino as part of the resort and the discovery of a runaway teenager hiding on the property open up a world neither the Hirschlers nor Brooke had considered before. Will they be able to overcome their challenges and differences to help the ones among them hurting the most?