A generational saga beginning in the 1800's that revolves around the murder of an infant and documents the lives and hardships of various members of the pioneering Pennsylvania and Ohio Amish communities. While lengthy and at times tedious, Miller offers a complex narrative spanning 50 years of loss and guilt, judgment and forgiveness, and finally of love. A rewarding and rich historic portrait of an often idealized group of people. ( )

I picked this book up in Lancaster, PA on a trip to Amish Country with my mother and grandmother. This looked very intriguing to me, so I bought it.

I read the book over the course of about a week and a half. It should have been a MUCH quicker read, given the fact that the writing is simplistic and the story itself is only borderline decent.

This book is over-long, given the subject matter. To make a long story short, this book is about infanticide in an Amish community, which happens to go unsolved for about 50 years.

The story is told in 1st person narrative by various members of the community, who each give their individual take on the crime. Chapter by chapter we hear from a different person recounting past and current "Amish Times", if you will.

This made the book difficult to read, in that it was next to impossible to keep track of all of the characters. I kept a running list, because not only did the narrative shift back and forth between characters, the time was constantly moving forward, which meant that new characters (mainly children of previous characters) would be introduced as they stepped up to tell their part of the story, but there is little to no explanation of who THEY are; you are left to keep track for yourself.

I think that nearly a 3rd of the book should never have made it past the cutting-room floor. I got the feeling that the author was subtly trying to defend the Amish religion a lot of the time, but not doing a very good job of it. It came across as a very harsh and unforgiving religion, although I am sure that is not always the case.

I had the "whodunnit" pegged long before the ending, despite all of the attempts to throw in a twist here and there. So the ending was very unsatisfying for me.

I ended up giving this a 2-star rating because it was an interesting look into the day-to-day Amish lifestyle in the early to mid-part of the 19th century, but the story itself certainly could have been better planned and better written. ( )

I was looking for a book about Amish (we know about my love of the Amish lifestyle) because my mom and I are planning a trip to Amish Country for this Fall. It is always nice to get yourself in "the mood" with a good book. Right?

Well...I think this one was much, much too long. I struggled through 500 + pages of it. Just wishing it was over already half of the time. But it was decent, so I kept reading it.

I kept hanging on because I just had to see "who done it" at the end. And, of course, Evie Yoder Miller made me wait until the veeeery end to find out. But it was who I thought all along.

This is a review I found on Amazon.com:
Miller's Eyes at the Window is a sturdy saga reaching from 1810 until the Civil War, set mostly in an Amish pioneer community in Ohio. Miller uses eight points of view to show the rise and fall of patriachs, the devoutness of women, and the privations of all as gradually the wilderness is tamed. She's particularly skilled at conjuring the internal lives of people who might seem stoical but, upon deeper examination, prove as passionate as anyone. Their passion is united over the murder of a baby in its crib, an event that transforms them all. The identity of the murderer isn't known for 50 years, making the life of one Reuben Hershberger an agony, since he is shunned as the putative culprit. The story is based on a true incident, and Miller has done a fine job with her research, avoiding anachronisms entirely.

Yes, this book was okay. But I felt that it just carried on too long. I was ready for a change of pace after page 300. ( )