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Middlefield Family Books In Order

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Publication Order of Middlefield Family Books

Treasuring Emma (2011)Description / Buy at Amazon
Faithful to Laura (2012)Description / Buy at Amazon
Letters to Katie (2013)Description / Buy at Amazon

The name ‘Middlefield Family’ refers to a series of Amish romance novels written by Kathleen Fuller. Kathleen’s reputation in the literary arena revolves around her ability to produce compelling stories set in Amish communities.

The Middlefield Family series builds upon the stories she has been telling about the men, women, and children living in the Amish communities of Middlefield, Ohio.

+The Story

Kathleen Fuller has written numerous stories set in Middlefield, Ohio. Most of them have been romance novels of one sort or another. The Middlefield Family series is definitely saturated with romance. However, the books are primarily about family.

Kathleen writes about Amish men and women that are struggling with the idea of what it means to be Amish. They are not always in sync with the values of Amish life and their struggles, particularly the romantic conflicts, allow Kathleen’s characters to grow and to find their place in the world.

Anyone that has read Kathleen Fuller’s Amish novels will tell you that the author succeeds in writing Amish characters that are realistic and relatable. That might not sound like a notable achievement. However, if you take the time to read the Amish literature on the shelves of bookstores today, you will find that authors tend to lose themselves in the stereotypes that surround the Amish in popular culture, allowing those most common clichés and tropes to drive their stories.

And it is easy to see why this approach works. The perceived outlandish nature of the Amish, at least as they are presented in popular fiction today, elicits interest from readers and drives sales because audiences cannot help but wonder at the manner in which the stories set in Amish communities will differ from conventional fiction.

However, Kathleen has always endeavored to avoid these tropes. If anything, it has always been Kathleen’s goal to strip the Amish of their romantic façade. She doesn’t want to separate them from what makes them Amish; many a reader experiments with Amish fiction because they want to get immersed in a wholly foreign culture hidden within conventional society.

The characters Kathleen creates are as Amish as they come. However, she also endeavors to present them as real people with real problems, and that makes her work a rarity.

And that is especially stark in the Middlefield Family series. Kathleen has always written characters that struggle with relatively conventional problems but who operate wholly within the Amish arena.

The cast of the Middlefield Family series is a little different. The men and women in these books are not always nice, wholesome people with tender hearts, forgiving souls and an immovable dedication to their faith. Rather, some of them even struggle with the decision to join the church and pursue the Amish life.

Others cannot quite bring themselves to manifest the kind and forgiving heart encouraged by the Amish. They harbor unpleasant thoughts and pursue grudges, and they are not always nice to the people they meet. In other words, the characters of the Middlefield Family series are unlike any other Amish people Kathleen Fuller has created.

It could be argued that, by the time the author began writing these novels, she had created a mold, a signature style that was present in her Amish stories. And in an effort to avoid getting stale and predictable, she saw fit to spice things up with a different cast of characters who are not as Amish as they would like to be.

The creative decision definitely pays off. These books are more interesting that many of Kathleen’s previous works because her Amish characters keep skirting the boundaries of what is acceptable.

They have either betrayed or been betrayed. And they are no so keen on letting their hurts go. The love stories in these books might be a little too numerous for some people to follow. Each book tends to play with more than one couple.

And because each new book in the Middlefield Family series introduces a new couple even while building upon the relationships of the previous couples from the previous books, the number of love stories running at the same time eventually grows to a point where Kathleen is incapable of effectively exploring each relationship and plot point she introduces.

It has been suggested that Kathleen’s books would have been better if some of the relationships she shoehorned into the different Middlefield Family novels had been assigned to their own individual novels.

Unfortunately, Kathleen Fuller seems to have a thing for trilogies and exploring her supporting characters in their own individual novels would have forced her series to expand beyond what she intended.

+The Author

Kathleen Fuller is a Child of New Orleans in Louisiana. Born in 1967, Kathleen wanted to be a journalist as a child. She eventually seemed to settle on the law before deciding that marketing might be her best bet.

After shifting her focus from profession to profession, Kathleen eventually set her sights on teaching. She even acquired the necessary qualifications before finally finding that her calling was to teach.

Besides her faith and her family, Kathleen treasures her writing career above all else because it allows her to touch other people even while augmenting her own understanding of her belief system.

Most of Kathleen’s fans know that she loves romance, and romance is an important aspect of all her Christian fiction. Not all those fans know of the author’s love for history.

+Treasuring Emma

Emma thought Adam would love her forever. But then her best friend went away after deciding that the world had more to offer than Emma. Emma’s heart broke and when Adam finally returned to Middlefield, she refused to give him an inch of her soul, even though he seemed determined to hang around her family’s farm.

When a new man comes to town, Emma doesn’t know what to do with all the attention he keeps giving her, especially in light of Adam’s call for caution.

+Faithful to Laura

Sawyer Thompson might have spent most of his teenage years with an Amish family but, as he enters adulthood, he isn’t so sure that he wants to join the church. Sawyer finds some solace in the company of Laura Stutzman.

Laura came to Middlefield with the intention of finding and getting her revenge against the man who loved her and then ruined her life. Sawyer understands Laura’s anger and as he seeks to comfort her, their friendship takes another step forward.

Laura wants to let her guard down but Sawyer has a secret that could destroy everything he has built with Laura.

Book Series In Order » Characters » Middlefield Family

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