A Shining Light by Judith Miller

"A Shining Light" by Judith Miller is the newest book in her collection about the community of West Amana, Iowa. At the beginning of the book we found our main character Andrea with her young son Lukas finding out that her husband is dead at sea.  She decides she is going to go home to her father and the community of West Amana in Iowa.  When Andrea gets back home she finds her father's home has burned down and then she finds out that her father was killed in the fire. She also finds out that her dad sold the property the community.  I have to admit at this point in the story I thought I knew where the story was going but I was wrong.  Yes a mystery does happen but not the one you would think.  Andrea decides to stay in the close Christian group she grew up in West Amana, she is not sure on how they will treat her as she had left home and married an outsider.  Her son in my opinion is the one who helps her soften her to the community and to his new friend/mentor the tinsmith named Dirk.  As she is trying to find out what happened to the money that her dad received from the property sale, she gets told she needs to get to town quickly as someone needs her.  I am going to leave you here as this starts the mystery and adventure portion of the story.  This does have some romance with Dirk and her but the not the overly sickly sweet kind.  This book I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did.  Once I started it I could not put it down.  The story flows very well with very good characters.  It had just enough story, side story,and character development that it was not over done.  I would highly recommend this book.
  Now I will say that there was one thing that bothered me but it has nothing to do with the content of the book.  This is the 2nd fiction book I have received from Bethany House Publisher that has the same type of cover a young woman looking down with her eyes closed and holding something in her hands.  By just going by the cover I would think both books were the same but after reading them I knew they were not.  When it comes to Christian fiction a lot of people will pick up one because they like the cover, so I was disappointed to see very similar cover on two different books by two different authors.  So please remember the old adage don't judge a book by its cover.

I received this book from Bethany House Publishing for my honest review.