Waiting for Summer's Return (Heart of the Prairie #1) - Kim Vogel Sawyer

In the past, I have read two other books in this series.  As far as I can tell, not many of the books have anything to do with others.  Courting Miss Amsel is book 6 and Song of My Heart is book 8.  I couldn't really find connections between the two.  I saw this book was up for free this month, so I picked it up.  I placed more of this author's books on my watch list and they all dropped at the same time.  When I picked this up, I didn't know that it dealt with the Mennonites.  I don't have anything against books about this culture, but I normally don't enjoy those or ones dealing with the Amish.  Not sure why.  They just don't appeal to me.

Summer has lost everything.  Her husband and four children were taken by typhoid and now she is alone.  The Mennonites in the community seem to have little interest in helping her, and she has little interest in living.  All alone, she ends up taking up an offer of employment with a miller who needs help with his son's schooling.  She's given up on God and Peter tries to show her the way back.  The community isn't sure about the intelligence of Peter's plan to have Summer stay in his shack and they both suffer the effects of the local gossips.

Peter's wife died on the way to America and now he lives with her grandmother and his son.  When his son falls from a tree and breaks some ribs, he hears that Summer is a recent widow and may be an educated woman.  Feeling that God is asking him to reach out to her, he does his best to make sure she is comfortable in the shack.  After a while, she seems to fit in perfectly with their family, but she has plans to build her own house and move close to the graves of her family.  Peter's son believes she would make the perfect mother, but it takes some time for their feelings to become clear for them.

Overall, it was a pretty decent read, but I did have some issues with it.  Peter's accent was my major qualm.  His native language is German, but at times he has no accent, other times a slight accent, and the worst is when it is so bad he sounds like Yoda.  "Come when ready you are" is something close to what I read and all I could think of was the raspy little voice of a small green guy with a lightsaber.  And the interactions between the native people should have theoretically been in German, therefore not needing any sort of accent.  Instead it seemed like they spoke to each other in English.  I did like the main point of finding joy past the pain and thought that was well done.  The second book in the series is about the son of Peter, but I don't have it on my watch list.  The ones I was watching all popped up as price drops at the same time.  If this had been the only book by this author I had read, I'm not sure that I would have had any on my watch list, but I know that I can enjoy her books and look forward to reading the ones I purchased.