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I thought I would share a new book with you called Virtuous Women by Ann Goltz (Author) that I received a PDF copy of from the Author and Voracious Readers in exchange for this review. Inside this post is my affiliate links if you click on the links and make a purchase I will make a small percentage from the items you purchase.
Virtuous Women is a complex novel of faith that at times not only reminded me of a Amish life but cults that existed when I was a child. My best friend growing up was treated a lot like Hope was. She could only wear dresses to school and had to wait for the school bus ibn freezing weather in those dresses.
Debbie’s dad was also a Preacher and she couldn’t attend dances at school. She had to clean the house before going with her friends anywhere and we weren’t allowed to help her. It got so bad her parents even tried to take her child. Reading Virtuous Women helped me come to understand Debbie more and what all she faced.
I know the book isn’t real and that Hope Wagner was alive before I was but I wish I had been her to help her but back then this is how women were treated and there isn’t anything we could do to change things. Although Hope Wagner needed friends and things shouldn’t have been that hard for her.
Hope Wagner was raised in a fundamentally religious family and her mother died giving birth to her eleventh child. Can you imagine having 11 kids? Hope’s father refuses to seek medical attention, feeling that physicians are shysters. Which if I was to admit the truth at times I’ve felt the same way about doctors and the medicines they prescribe with all the harmful side effect.
Hope, at fifteen, still a child herself assumes the role of mother to her ten siblings. Hope cooks all the meals, supervises the children in their chores and behavior, homeschools them, does the laundry, shops for the groceries, and is unappreciated. The father, Micheal, is a staunch unrelentingly man, and a deacon.
Women are helpmeets with no interests outside the home and there is no room in Michael’s eyes or those of his God for errors or sin of any sort. Hope is forced to set aside her dreams and her prospects for marriage and a lifestyle unlike that of her father. Hope is a helpmeets she isn’t allowed to have interests outside the home. There is no room in Hope is forced to set aside her dreams and her prospects for marriage and a lifestyle unlike that of her father.
You might thing this is the end of the story but it isn’t it’s almost two books in one. The father remarries Jennifer and we learn of her story and what happens. Before you ask me to tell you about her I’m not going to you need to pick up a copy of Virtuous Women to find out for yourself what happens and why.
About the book:
There’s only one way to be virtuous. Or is there? In the two years since her mother’s death, seventeen-year-old Hope Wagner has single-handedly raised and homeschooled her ten younger siblings while keeping her father’s house. When her father marries the strange newcomer to their church, Hope is allowed to begin a courtship that will make her a helpmeet in her own right. Much to her surprise, her betrothed has a vision for their life that includes radical ideas like education, careers, and choosing how many children they want to have rather than leaving it up to God. For the first time Hope can imagine a different future than the one her father’s planned for her, and she wants that future more than she’s ever wanted anything else.
Jennifer Levine has always wanted a large, close-knit family that lives according to traditional values, just like all those families she reads about in her beloved historical novels. When Michael, a handsome, successful widower at her new church begins to court her, Jennifer believes she’s found the life of her dreams. But Jennifer’s new life is a nightmare of inadequacy and futility as she tries to embody her husband’s idea of a virtuous woman, and she discovers the dark side of their conservative Christian sect. When Jennifer finally rejects Michael’s authority over her, she launches the family into a crisis that threatens Hope’s future and will change their lives forever.
Meet the Author: Ann Goltz
Ann Goltz writes fiction that deals with complicated family dynamics, questions of identity, and the intersection of faith and life.
After spending five years working in government finance, she obtained a Master’s in Divinity and became an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
No longer in active ministry, she lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two teenagers, and three cats. Virtuous Women is her first published novel.
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Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
