cover image By Evening’s Light

By Evening’s Light

Leslie Gould. Bethany House, $17.99 trade paper (432p) ISBN 978-0-76424-026-3

Gould (This Passing Hour) wraps up the Amish Memories series with a captivating tale of lost love. In 2019, Treva Zimmerman visits her Amish grandparents’ farm in Lancaster, Pa., after breaking things off with a love interest. Seeking a fresh start, Treva intends to take a job at a friend’s event-planning company in Alaska, but her plans change when her great-great-aunt Rosene has a heart attack and Treva stays on the farm to help care for her. As the two women spend time together, Rosene recounts her harrowing upbringing in Nazi Germany, her adoption by a Mennonite family in Lancaster, and her love affair with a neighbor, which ended when she returned from a trip to Germany in the late 1940s to discover he’d disappeared. Treva begins to look into what might have happened to Rosene’s long-lost love, even though she has more than enough to keep her busy, including maintaining the farm with her grandparents and helping Gabe, a family friend who’s returned from serving in Kuwait, reacclimate to life back home. Will Treva follow through on her Alaska plans or stay in Lancaster to care for those she loves? Gould develops Treva’s interior world with depth and nuance, sensitively probing themes of loss, duty, and the past’s hold on the present. This sends the series out on a high note. (Aug.)