In the small Puritan community of Stoneybrooke, Massachusetts, Susannah Phillips stands out both for her character and beauty. She wants only a simple life but soon finds herself pursued by the town’s wealthiest bachelor and by a roguish military captain sent to protect them. One is not what he seems and one is more than he seems.
In trying to discover true love’s path, Susannah is helped by the most unlikely of allies, a wounded woman who lives invisible and ignored in their town. As the depth, passion, and sacrifice of love is revealed to Susannah, she begins to question the rules and regulations of her childhood faith. In a community where grace is unknown, what price will she pay for embracing love?
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Sexual Content - 1/5
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Violence - 2/5
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Language - 1/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - 0/5
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Summary
Overall As is customary for Ms. Mitchell's novels, she approaches her writing topics from a different angle than most. Her brilliance is in revealing the absurdities of the times about which she writes. Love's Pursuit centers on the Puritans who came to the Americas in order to be able to worship God in a way that they believed to be more pure than the worship they viewed as polluted and idolatrous in the Church of England. However, Ms. Mitchell shows her readers that while the original idea may have been noble and right, Puritan living and worship of God, in some communities, had sunk into a works based lifestyle which led to violence, paranoia, and disillusionment. Grim. Living yet not living. Joylessness. In this novel, the protagonist is a young unmarried woman who is waiting for a marriage proposal from the one who claims to love her. Unfortunately, another man who is a leader in the community and very successful wants her and stops at nothing to claim her for himself. Enter yet another manan
outsider, the King's man sent to protect them. The Puritans are suspicious of him and consider him to be unspiritual, but the truth is that he understands Truth and Grace much better than these Puritans do. Our righteous, Puritanical protagonist is caught in a spiritual and emotional web and is resigned to live out a life of a loveless, violent marriage the community's eyes are closed to the truth. I believe Ms. Mitchell desires for her readers to think clearly about what they believe and understand why they believe as they do perhaps even consider adjusting what they hold to be true if it doesn't line up with God's truth. This is not a \"happily ever after\" ending. In fact, it begs for a sequel.