Daughter of Ishmael

Daughter of Ishmael

Promised Land, Broken Heart

From the back cover:

In one statement, Father Lehi and Ishmael had stripped away her gentle, girlish dreams and replaced them with stark reality.  

She was marrying a stranger.

When Hannah learns she will be given in marriage to a son of Lehi, she dreams of raising children in the paths of righteousness with a worthy priesthood holder. Instead, she is met with unimaginable hardship: an arduous journey, a cowardly husband, and possible infertility. Hannah had promised herself long ago that she would follow the Lord and His prophet, but when she thinks her journey is over, she is faced with an impossible choice between faith and family.

I absolutely loved this book!  For my friends that are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, (the Mormon church) some of my references my be confusing as this book is based off of people found in the Book of Mormon.  Feel free to ask me questions or you can always go to www.lds.org  and look up things as well.

Hannah is the daughter of Ishmael, who is a relative of Father Lehi.  The story starts when Hannah is a young child and follows her through her childhood and teenage years, her marriage to one of Lehi's sons and their travels to the Land of Promise.

As one reads the Book of Mormon, you are aware that there are people that are not mentioned because there is just not enough room to write it all down. Anyway, I have always wondered about the women that married Lehi's sons.  This story is one interpretation of who those women were.

The daughters of Ishmael:

Moriah, patient,kind Moriah.  Life does not go the way she thought it would. Does not go the way it was planned for her.  But ever patient and kind her reward is better than she could have ever planned or dreamed.

Uzziel, ever impatient and not always kind.  Life gives her the reward she asks for, the reward she takes for herself even though it was meant for someone else.  But in the end it is the reward meant for her. And the getting of the brass plates as outlined in 1st Nephi in The Book of Mormon ensures that the stolen reward is not taken at the expense of the one it was taken from.

The twins, Amanna and Anava, adventurous and learning. A ray of sunshine and light heartedness for their father and a help to Hannah, she who is the namesake of this book.

Hannah, loves her father, loves her family, loves the prophet Lehi, the scriptures and her God.  But as anyone that has lived life knows, while those things are promised to bring us happiness and reward, sometimes life has a way of testing us to make us prove that we are and will remain faithful.  

Hannah was named after she of the Old Testament,Samuel's mother.  And like Hannah of the Old Testament, our Hannah is tried and tested over and over again.  But she thinks deep, trusts in her Lord and uses her faith to help her when life is hardest.  

When the plans for her future are altered in a way that ensures even more hardship.

 When her husband turns out to have as little faith and character as it is possible to have and still be breathing.  

When all of her sisters and sisters in law are having children and she, like Hannah of old, is not.

When her beloved Father dies in the valley of  Nahom.

When the trip across the ocean proves almost more than she can bear, and then takes a turn for the worse when Nephi is tied up and the Liahonna stops working leaving everyone in despair that they will perish.

When her son begins to idolize his uncle Laman and act like him.

When she must decide, in the end, who and what she will trust. Who and what she will be. Even when it is hard.

I fell in love with Hannah.  I want her to be the actual daughter of Ishmael because I want to know her, to talk to her, to walk with her, to be her friend.

And I want her story to continue so there absolutely HAS to be a second book so I can be with her and get to know her some more.

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About the author

Diane Stringam Tolley was born and raised on the great Alberta prairies. Daughter of a ranching family of writers, she inherited her love of writing at a very early age. Diane was trained in journalism, and she has penned countless articles, short stories, novels, plays and songs and is the published author of two Christmas novels: Carving Angels  and Kris Kringle's Magic. She and her husband, Grant, live in Beaumont, Alberta, and are the parents of six and grandparents of seventeen.

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Indeed