When Emma Nafziger delivers her third son into the Amish community of Holmes County, Ohio, she hears Midwife Ruth exclaim, “Ach! This child will be special. He is born with the caul over his head, marked by Gott for special things!”
As Young James Nafziger grows, the midwife’s prophecy appears to be coming true. His parents are both amazed and frightened by their son’s gift of what they call “second sight.” He senses both danger and sickness and has a keen instinct for helping the afflicted. At age thirteen, he is already becoming known as a healer in his Amish community.

James’ desire to serve the Amish people as a healer is complicated when his thirst for more education takes him into the world of der Englischer where he is beguiled by April Adams, the adopted daughter of James’ outsider-cousin, Hannah. He becomes a man torn between love of two worlds, and his two-pronged story is central to The Book of James.

The people surrounding James become fodder for author Janice Dembosky’s signature multiple-plot stories: the heart-rending story of James’ sister Barbara who is led astray at a rumschpringe party, Lizzy Yoder’s tragedy, an English woman’s desire to seduce James, the struggle of Ida Yoder and Isaac Goodman to forget one another—all become stories-within-the-story that take the reader through Dembosky’s typical twists and turns of plot with unpredictable results.
As with the three previous books in what has now become The Bond Woman Amish Series, The Book of James (Book 4) promises to hold the reader spell-bound.