A Stone's Throw from Paradise

To escape her worries, Lizzie decides to spend the entire summer at Grandma Zook's farm in Paradise, Pennsylvania working at the Zook Nook to earn a little pocket money and hoping to find out more about her real mother. She finds a few other secrets she hadn't been looking for either.

The rude awakening Lizzie got was that the Amish did things the old-fashioned way, getting up before the sun to do the farm chores and making the items for the Zook Nook. I got a good laugh when Lizze complained about the chicken stink in the coop and the organic sounds and smell of an impolite cow. I also laughed when she found out what scrapple was made of.

But, life on the farm wasn't all that awful, Lizzie also found out the missing pie pieces to the mystery of her mother. She also realized that, even though the Amish tried to live perfect lives according to the Church Order, they were still human and fallible, even Grandma Zook.

After six weeks with Grandma Zook, Lizzie didn't think her life was all that bad either. Now that she had been on the farm, things at home were like paradise.

Lizzy is a sad, young adolescent who loves her father and barely tolerates her stepmother and half brother. She longs to know about her real mother and her own homeland roots. Liz's mother and father were shunned for leaving the Amish and there was little to no continuation of her heritage. Consequently, her father arranges for her to spend the summer with his mother who still is Amish and runs Zook's Nook.

During the trip back home to Pennsylvania, memories surface and father and daughter re-live their beginnings as a family, before the untimely death of Lizzie's mother in a car wreck when Liz was but an infant. Their first stop was a cafe which played a huge part in her parent's lives. Then there came a trip to see the "little pink house" which was gone. Despondent, they searched, found and purchased the gingerbread-porch and lightening rods.

When Liz ends up staying part of the summer with her Amish grandmother, she learns those people are very hard workers with precious little fun or freedom. They work hard for long hours 6 days a week. Discovering a telephone hidden safely for years in her grandmother's hay barn, Liz learns that even Amish elders (and kids) have skeletons in their closets and have to make amends for past wrongs.

As Liz spends time in the attic searching for her past, she finds articles and asks questions which lead her closer to her deceased mother. She eventually is privy to pictures and letters. Finally, her dad comes back and takes her on a little pilgrimage to the church where her parents were married and her mother's funeral was held. The church has been turned into a tourist shop.

After staying with her grandmother only three weeks, Liz gradually becomes aware of what is important and whom she can trust and love. Somehow, she bridges the past with the present and returns home with a different outlook on life with her stepmother, baby brother and their "shiny submarine trailer house" that is suddenly HOME.