When the Heart Cries

I bought this book because it was on clearance, and I thought maybe it would be an interesting peek into the Amish lifestyle. Yes, it was, and I was glad. But more than that, this story is a heart-wrenching account of how rape so completely changes the lives of its victims. After the attack (Chapter 1), the rapist is never again mentioned in the story, except in the victim's fears of seeing him again. It is presumed that he moves on, never giving the interaction a second thought.

But Hannah, the girl attacked, is never the same. Those five awful minutes changed everything for her. I don't just mean her personal thoughts and the way she views the world and other people. It changed all her relationships with family, friends, neighbors. It changed her plans, it changed the way she was looked upon, it changed everything.

It seems almost everything I read anymore has some reference to rape, so this is not the first time it has affected me. But this book was so much more than I had expected. The writing seemed forced much of the time and parts of the plot didn't deliver the way I hoped they would. But because I felt so connected to Hannah, I often found myself wanting to crawl inside the story, which I think is usually a good testimony to the quality of a novel.