When the heart cries: a novel

Despite being raised in a traditional Old Order Amish family, seventeen-year-old Hannah Lapp desires to break with custom, forgo baptism into the faith, and marry outside the cloistered community. She's been in love with Mennonite Paul Waddell for three years, and before returning to college for his senior year, Paul asks Hannah to be his wife. Hannah accepts, aware that her marriage will change her relationship with her family forever. On the evening of their engagement, tragedy strikes and in one unwelcome encounter, all that Hannah has known and believed is destroyed. As she finds herself entangled in questions that the Old Ways of her people cannot answer, Hannah faces the possibility of losing her place in her family, in her community-and in the heart of the man she loves. Cindy Woodsmall and her husband make their home in Georgia and have raised and home schooled three sons. Her husband became her staunchest supporter while she took writing courses, attended seminars, and strove to write a story from seeds sown years ago when her best friend was a Beachy Amish Mennonite girl. When the Heart Cries is Cindy's first novel.