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Darcie and Walter Goodwin join a Shaker village to escape a cholera epidemic, but when Walter dies, Darcie is left alone—and lonely. Can love live again for this widow in a community that doesn’t believe in marriage?
My Thoughts:
This is a revised
review as the author clarified a misunderstanding I had.
The Refuge was an
interesting historical read about a Shaker community and those who lived there
and embraced the beliefs and those who sought refuge. Darcie and her husband
sought refuge with the Shakers due to a cholera outbreak, hoping to escape the
death that had claimed so many of their loved ones. Unfortunately Darcie ends up
a pregnant widow in a strange and foreign lifestyle, not really belonging nor
is she very happy.
This was definitely an eye-opener on many of the strange
ways of the Shakers, what they believed about marriage and how they worshiped
God. (I will state that I was confusing
them with Quakers, completely my fault, and thank you to the author for the
clarification, so my review reflects these changes). This was an interesting read all the same and
it goes deeper into a Shaker community ways, a cult that I had not known or
heard of before (that I remember).
However, they did play an important role in the surrounding
communities, kind of like the monasteries of medieval age. They were a source
of clean water, food, education, and hospitals when needed to be.
This was a heartbreaking read at first and I found it
interesting all the reasons one would choose to leave all and join the Shaker
community.
I received a copy of this novel from the publisher. I was
not required to post a positive review and all views and opinions are my own.
Just for clarity, the religious group in the book, The Refuge are Shakers. They did have very different beliefs from the Shakers although at the very beginning of their history they were called Shaking Quakers. The name Shakers was a term of derision used by those outside the cult because of the way the Shaker believers would dance and sometimes tremble and shake in their worship. The Shakers embraced the name and put it on their many products they sold while their villages were active. All the Shaker communities have died out now except one in Sabbathday Lake, Maine. So the book isn't about Quakers at all, but Shakers.
ReplyDeleteI do appreciate you reading my book and writing a review. I have tried doing reviews and it's not an easy task to condense something about the storyline and your thoughts into a couple of paragraphs. So thank you for your review.
I feel really silly now. :-) Thank you so much for clarifying that for me. There lifestyle makes so much more sense now.
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