Status Updates From Their Amish Reunion (Amish ...

“I remember Gideon,” he finally said to Isaac. “With the army of three hundred against all of those thousands of Midianites. That’s what my team and I were constantly up against—the kind of enemy that always has more coming." fascinating...identifying as the perpetual underdog is such classic american conservative christian pathology

"He’d have to take whatever came his way & deal with it based on the rule of surrendering his will to God. In the Navy, he’d had to surrender himself to his instructors & superiors to be broken down & made new again—stronger, more dedicated, more demanding & *completely compliant.* It was the same here, only this time his will was being softened & measured & renewed with hope & love instead of death & despair." Hmm!

the setup is Jeremiah got kicked out of the Amish community when he left to join the navy, but 99% of military romance threads the needle btw criticism (ptsd/mistreatment of vets) & glorification (our brave warriors) w/o acknowledgement of the wider political context/reality of war (american imperialism/war crimes), so w his arc abt returning to his Amish comm. i'm v curious abt this book's stance wrt the military

This is what I'm talking about: "Jeremiah became enamored of Edward. Edward’s Englisch ways and military talk swayed Jeremiah and changed him. Soon, Jeremiah began to spend more and more time with Edward, running and exercising with him, swimming in the big pool behind the Campton mansion, learning all about dangerous weapons and listening to Edward’s stories of valor." Like??

I know it's not actually going in that direction bc this is christian romance, but the way the mcs' backstory is framed - they had a budding romance as teenagers before the hero decided to leave the amish community and join the us military after befriending and hero-worshiping a wealthy man a decade older who was a navy seal - it reads so much like a love triangle and the heroine was the losing side