Like Job of the bible, Job Jedediah Hoffer loses everything and becomes a bitter, lonely man. Blaming his deceased mother for giving him that cursed name solves nothing. Job asks Gideon Schrock, bishop of his church district, to change his name in the church records. He wants to be known hereafter as Jedediah Hoffer, or just plain Jed. Sympathetic, the bishop agrees to change Job’s name, in hope that Jedediah will rebound from the depths of despair.

Though his name is changed on the church books, it is not changed in the minds of his Old Order Amish clan, who continue the habit of assigning nicknames to distinguish members of the community who have the same name. They persist in calling their unhappy brother Jed-used-to-be-Job, forever saddling him with the despised name.

Infuriated with both God and man, Jed refuses to fellowship at Church or with any of his neighbors in Amish Valley. He becomes a solitary man, until the day, mowing his farthest field which lies next to a highway, he finds an unconscious “English” woman lying in a ditch on his land.

Because Jed is a decent man—one who did not deserve the tragedy he believes God sent to him, anymore than Job of the Bible did—he knows he must help this woman. Using the broad back of his Belgian horse, he manages to get her to his modest home and plans to take her to Dr. James Nafziger whose practice is in the town of Beatitudes, a kindness that will change Jed’s life.

As well as introducing readers to new characters, the story of Jed-used-to-be-Job, book 5 in The Bond Woman Amish Series, becomes a reunion for readers who become reacquainted with James and April and all of the characters they came to know and love in these fascinating books.