My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"Don't make something unless it is both made necessary and useful;
but if it is both necessary and useful,
don't hesitate to make it beautiful."
---- Shaker dictumbut if it is both necessary and useful,
don't hesitate to make it beautiful."
According to Wikipedia, The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing is a religious sect, also known as the Shakers, founded in the 18th century in England, having branched off from a Quaker community. They were known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services.
Gale Martin, an award winning American author and one of my favorite authors, has yet once again enthralled my soul with her new book, Grace Unexpected featuring the American Shaker community and a woman with all her confused life's decisions to make.
Synopsis:
Thirty-something Grace Savage has slogged through crummy jobs and dead-end relationships with men who would rather go bald than say "I do." In search of respite from her current job, she visits Shaker Village in New Hampshire. Instead of renewal, she's unnerved to learn that Shaker men and women lived and worked side by side in complete celibacy. When her longtime boyfriend dumps her instead of proposing, Grace avows the sexless Shaker ways. Resolved to stick to her new plan - dubbed the Shaker Plan - despite ovaries ticking like time bombs, she returns to her life in Pennsylvania. Almost immediately, she's juggling two eligible bachelors: Addison, a young beat reporter; and True, a venerable anthropology professor. Both men have ample charms and soul mate potential to test her new found Shaker-style self-control, and Grace appears to be on the fast track to a marriage proposal... until secrets revealed deliver a death rattle to the Shaker Plan.
