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    The Hope Chest
    The Hope Chest
    The Hope Chest
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Hope Chest

    Written by Wanda E Brunstetter

    Narrated by Christina Moore

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In The Hope Chest by New York Times best-selling author Wanda E. Brunstetter, Rachel Beachy hopes to one day win the heart of Silas Swartley. Unfortunately, he is smitten with her older sister Anna. But after Anna forsakes her Amish heritage and elopes with a secret sweetheart, Rachel determines to fill her hope chest and asks God to open Silas' eyes to the woman she's become.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 24, 2009
    ISBN9781440718571
    The Hope Chest
    Author

    Wanda E Brunstetter

    New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Wanda E. Brunstetter is one of the founders of the Amish fiction genre. She has written more than 100 books translated in four languages. With over 12 million copies sold, Wanda's stories consistently earn spots on the nation's most prestigious bestseller lists and have received numerous awards. Wanda’s ancestors were part of the Anabaptist faith, and her novels are based on personal research intended to accurately portray the Amish way of life. Her books are well-read and trusted by many Amish, who credit her for giving readers a deeper understanding of the people and their customs. When Wanda visits her Amish friends, she finds herself drawn to their peaceful lifestyle, sincerity, and close family ties. Wanda enjoys photography, ventriloquism, gardening, bird-watching, beachcombing, and spending time with her family. She and her husband, Richard, have been blessed with two grown children, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. To learn more about Wanda, visit her website at www.wandabrunstetter.com. 

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    Reviews for The Hope Chest

    4/5

    35 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      it is a very good book would recommend some people like me.
    • 2/5
      The American FutureSimon Schama’s new book, The American Future: A History, is an attempt to interpret the watershed election of 2008 through the longer lens of American history. Schama’s approach, however, is rambling, weaving episodic historical and personal anecdotes in a sort of time-machine kaleidoscope of thoughts. Whatever unifying themes he was attempting to convey were obscured by this approach.In addition, Schama’s writing reveals that he was caught up in the political rhetoric, resulting in a biased and unbalanced perspective.In time, we’ll understand the political currents at play during what seems at this point a key juncture in American politics – but we’ll need to wait a bit longer for that.
    • 4/5
      So you think you know American History pretty well?You might be persuaded otherwise after reading Simon Schama’s The American Future.The book starts out with the story of Montgomery Meigs, the first in a long line of patriots in service to our country from the very beginning of our beginnings until the present day. How did Americans miss this great story? From those members of the Meigs military dynasty who were convinced that the American government’s course was right, to those who thought the government had taken a seriously wrong detour along the way, and some Meigs’in between, all of whom in the name of duty and love of country did what they could to reconcile their personal cognitive dissonance and give their all, including their lives, for America. What I want to know is this: Why isn’t Montgomery Meigs as well known as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Frederick Von Steuben or Thaddeus Kosciuszko?Along the way the story lags, meanders and jumps a little but it covers some crucial ground that should be required reading for every school child. It includes the early settlement records of Georgia and Texas that I had already seen with my own eyes while doing genealogical research. Along the way we meet Fannie Lou Hamer (if we haven’t known her before) and get re-acquainted with Grover Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Although my personal experience and opinions do not always match Simon Schama’s take on things and the meanderings are sometimes too “Tom Wolfe” for my tastes as I prefer my non-fiction plain, we have to ask:Why are Americans so ignorant about our own history? We have attempted to clean it up for our schoolchildren with terms like “resettlement” and “land grants” but don’t we have public libraries? Don’t we have Simon Schama? Aren’t we adults yet?The author takes us through the fear between the gunpowder explosions, the sorrow of broken families with conflicting alliances, broken promises, disgusting displays of inhumanity (but thankfully without too many graphic descriptions), individual determination to see ideals and dreams realized no matter what the cost, and the creativity and genius used for both good or greed of what we like to believe is purely American.Simon Schama can be forgiven if he occasionally gets it wrong. Teddy Roosevelt was nowhere near Buffalo, NY when he received word of McKinley’s death: He was in the Adirondack Mountains on the opposite end of the state and was sworn in as the new president near my hometown in North Creek, NY, at the railroad station when word of the former president’s death reached him.The author ends on an optimistic note although I don’t see how he suddenly got there. Maybe he should have included a map for us to follow along with him to that place.
    • 5/5
      The Future of Americanism Through the Past If you have never read Simon Schama before, you don't know what good writing looks like. In "The American Future," Schama explores the essentials of American exceptionalism. Not really a straight narrative history, but more of an extended op-ed essay about the continuities of ideologies that extend throughout the founding of the republic up until the present.The book is divided into four sections, militarism, religion, immigration, and expansion. The essence of the American story is found in each of these themes. Schama does an exceptional job weaving the contemporary and the historical into a single continuous narrative. The story of the Meigs family is symbolic of the American military tradition that extends through multiple generations. Religious pluralism, the foundations of both the positive and negative qualities of humanity. The age of immigration introduces us to concepts of inclusion, exclusion, race, language, and culture. Finally, the long tradition of imperialism on the frontier and beyond.While nothing about the historical background and significance is new, it is Schama's writing that stands out. The art of writing is more than just making a point and Schama's choice of words and combination of metaphor and illustration is really magnificent.Overall, you really can't go wrong with "The American Future." The book is all of educational, philosophical, reflective, and entertaining. Free from the ideological constraints of the left or the right, but rather with an observant eye and the stroke of a pen. Schama hits the nail right on the head, "The American Future" is a can't miss.
    • 2/5
      This kind of seemed like Schama’s “stuff I like about American history” book; I understand it’s based on a four-part documentary, and maybe it worked better that way. As a book, it moved backwards and forwards through American history connected by broad themes (and occasionally by family histories, especially the Meigs family): military service, slavery and its legacy, religion, immigration, optimism about the promise of the West. Maybe my reaction was also influenced by Schama’s immediate-post-Obama optimism that he’d just seen an amazing revitalization of the American dream, but I didn’t get much of a sense of coherence.
    • 3/5
      I have read other books by this author but don't know if any are in this series or not.I liked Rachel's journey overall: from wanting the boy who liked her sister instead, to holding out hope that he might like her once her sister left the Amish faith, to giving up her hope, to realizing she needed to turn to God, and then God giving her what she had long hoped for.There's a lesson in Anna thinking things are greener on the other side of the fence. For a while, I wasn't sure if she married Reuben because she loved him or because she wanted to get away from the restrictions of Amish life. She did find that some of the things she'd thought she'd look forward to weren't as exciting as she'd thought or what she'd thought them to be. I was glad to see that Anna and Reuben seemed to have come to an agreement by the end of the book. He'd started going to church with her and seemed to be spending time with her again--for a while in the middle of the book I really did wonder if they were going to end up split up.I didn't like many of the ways that journey came about. Rachel seemed a bit bitter that Silas liked Anna and not her at some points in the story.Rachel seemed selfish in not wanting to help her family in the ways they needed her to help. She would prefer to be walking somewhere looking at birds or daydreaming--nonproductive things. Don't get me wrong, I think all of us have times we want to do things like that, but I'd have felt better about her choices if she'd wanted to do a different job on the farm or even fishing since that might bring back food for her family if nothing else. I can understand not really liking the greenhouse though.Rachel's supposed to be almost 19 and doesn't like being thought of as a child but to be honest, many of her actions seemed childish to me. She eavesdrops a lot. She likes Silas until she thinks she overhears him tell another Amish man that he still likes Anna--then she decides that she can't like him and won't even give him the chance to talk to her--even though by that point he is starting to like Rachel for herself and not be dwelling on what he could have had with Anna. Instead of talking to each other, Rachel and Silas both just assume things. Rachel assumes Silas can't forget Anna and that Anna will always be first in his heart. Silas doesn't tell Rachel he's struggling and needs to spend time in prayer. Rachel doesn't tell Silas that Abe asked her out and she refused.Anna learned valuable lessons in her journey but in ways I wish she hadn't had to learn them.