Review: Chasing Heaven?????
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 20, 2013
This story did not "feel" Amish to me. Through the whole thing, I felt as if I was reading a soap opera instead of watching it. Then I said to myself, “Ooh, this is one of those “progressive” Amish families you hear about.”For instance, there’s Abigail, who has left the Amish some 15 years ago and simply comes back and there is no problem. It’s as though she’s still Amish, married to and Amish man. Then there’s Thomas, who has been seeing Elizabeth for almost a year and cheating on her behind her back. No true Amishman would do such a thing. He would end the one relationship before starting another. Elizabeth decides to go on a date with Isaac even though there is talk of an arranged marriage between him and her sister, Grace, although Grace claims not to be interested. In true Amish tradition as I’ve come to see it, this would never happen with two sisters. If one doesn’t want a thing and the other does, she asks for the privilege of using it or having it, and it only happens by mutual agreement. And the kind of catty bickering between those two is certainly not typical of Amish sisters.When Clara’s parents gave her permission to go back to Philadelphia with Abigail, she made the statement, “Oh my God, I can’t believe it.” When would you ever hear a proper Amish person, male or female, use God’s name in vane in such a way?It had a great story line with lots of interesting characters, but somehow I feel they were not used to fullest potential. I didn’t like the way it kept jumping around from one scene to the other with them all mixed up. The  language this story was couched in doesn’t sound typical of what you come to expect from the Amish. And through all the problems the family members seemed to have, there was never any mention of seeing the Bishop about anything. Surely, in a troubled Amish family, that is one of the first things they consider doing. It could have been a much better story.