" This was a free download for my nook. I tend to like Amish novels, and I could tell by the cover picture that this was not about Amish, but along the same lines. It turns out it is about two girls in the Amana Colonies in Iowa, which were cooperative living communities settled by German Lutherans in the 1800s and early 1900s. The people of Amana dressed "plain" and lived simply and communally, several families to a house. The village leaders assigned each person a job... working in the gardens, with the animals, in the kitchens (which fed the whole neighborhood each meal, as there were no kitchens in their houses,) in the fabric factory. It was a very interesting look at a community that I hadn't heard of. A nice little story about the two girls, although the story of the younger girl (sorry, I don't remember the names, as I finished reading this a few weeks ago,) felt incomplete. My biggest complaint is that the book provided little to no background information about the setting... as I began to read, I was confused about what type of community this was, so I ended up looking it up online. More information was revealed as the book went on, but without having looked it up, I believe I still would have been a bit unclear on the concept. Perhaps just a one page introduction containing the information that I provided above would have been helpful. "
— Emily, 2/6/2014