"Sworn to Silence" By: Linda Castillo Review

"Sworn to Silence"

By: Linda Castillo

Synopsis from Amazon:

In the sleepy rural town of Painters Mill, Ohio, the Amish and English residents have lived side by side for two centuries. But sixteen years ago, a series of brutal murders shattered the peaceful farming community. In the aftermath of the violence, the town was left with a sense of fragility, a loss of innocence. Kate Burkholder, a young Amish girl, survived the terror of the Slaughterhouse Killer but came away from its brutality with the realization that she no longer belonged with the Amish.

My Thoughts:
      Wow! “Sworn to Silence” couldn't be described as anything other than intense. A friend picked up this book up and loved the character of Kate, so I decided I better try her out too! I was incredibly surprised by how much I enjoyed this novel, which is so outside the realm of what I normally read.
      Kate Burkholder used to be of the Amish faith, but decided to leave at the age of 16. When she decided to leave the faith, her family placed her under a bann and refused pretty much all communication with her. They felt the bann would bring her back to her place in the Amish community, but ultimately she left her family, went to college, and comes back as the Chief of Police. The town views this as a weird, but good combination since they had such a high Amish population.
      Kate is an interesting character. She was raised plain, but has lived in the English world for far too long to go back to her former life. She smokes, she drinks, and she curses but she understands Amish culture and personalities. The book revolves around a murder mystery affecting both the English and the Amish populations, and its interesting to see the differences.
       The book is intense, no doubt about it. While being a standard “who did it”, the novel is filled with Amish culture, police procedural, and interesting characters that really round out the story. I honestly was clueless about the bad guy until the very end! Perhaps the only thing I didn't like about the book were the intense passages about rape and the murders. Be warned because boy are they graphic. I'm going to find the second novel in this series, “Pray for Silence” this weekend, so I can learn a little more about Kate Burkholder's world. An intense mystery novel that most definitely isn't your mother's Amish book!  

Book Details

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Date of Publication: June 23, 2009

# of Pages: 336

ISBN: 0312374976