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Years after the death of her mother, Mareika Doerksen moves through her adolescence with feelings of loss, confusion, and isolation as she seems somewhere between not being a child and not being a complete woman. Her father, a Mennonite only ethnically and socially, and a long-time atheist, has always been distant but pragmatic as he prepared her for the day he expects her to abandon their homestead on the Canadian Prairies for an education once impossible for women of their time. They move day to day avoiding the tragedies, traumas, and social expectations they rebel against in their Mennonite community during the infancy of Canada. But with the looming arrival of the 1910 Halley's Comet, so too comes a handsome, charismatic Doomsday preacher. He captivates Mareika as he offers her solace and his ear. Meanwhile the local Bishop with a troubling and violent past sewn to the Doerksens, too, becomes obsessed with the maturing Mareika and sets out with the goal of saving her from the chiliast stranger and her atheist father.

John Reimer, a Mennonite preacher in Lakeview, Chicago, might be on the downslope of his ministerial career. At least that's how he feels most days. Then one morning in March a hungover waitress at the Melrose diner tells him to look into the murder of a bike messenger at North Pond--and begs him to keep the cops out of it. Before too long Reimer is making tracks through Chicago, asking a lot of questions, and leaving many people uncomfortable. Reimer encounters a menagerie of characters in his beloved city--among them a brooding detective who trusts Reimer's instincts; a Moody Bible Institute drop-out trying to stay on his antipsychotic medication; a charismatic alderman; and the church moderator, Nancy Huefflinger, an attorney who knows when to swagger and when to turn on the charm. Complicating things is Reimer's despair for his wife Vi, in hospice with an incurable neurological disease, and whose condition has shaken his faith to the core. When Reimer figures out that whoever killed the young man at North Pond is coming after him, too, he must summon all his inner resources--including some he didn't learn in seminary--if he wants to survive.

An Old Order Mennonite couple's vows and beliefs are challenged in this stirring contemporary novel for fans of Cindy Woodsmall or Shelley Shepherd Gray.Anthony and Marty Hirschler are part of an Old Order Mennonite community in Pine Hill, Indiana. The couple has grown apart since a doctor confirmed they would never have children. Marty longs to escape the tight-knit area where large families are valued, and the opportunity to do so arises when her childhood friend, Brooke Spalding, resurfaces with the wild idea of rebuilding a ghost town into a resort community. Brooke hires Anthony to help with the construction, drawing the Hirschlers away from Indiana and into her plan, and then finds herself diagnosed with cancer. Moral complications with Brooke's vision for a casino as part of the resort and the discovery of a runaway teenager hiding on the property open up a world neither the Hirschlers nor Brooke had considered before. Will they be able to overcome their challenges and differences to help the ones among them hurting the most?

Autumn 1990. The world is teetering on the edge of war in the Gulf, Germany is reunited and a crumbling USSR stares ruin in the face. In Japan, a group of powerful men and women gather to create a rescue plan that will bring all three countries together for the first time in fifty years. Polyglot international publisher Gill Langton is mediator-in-chief. Treading the highest wire of global power-broking, he alone can balance politics with intrigue, maneuver with counter-maneuver. But his love for the beautiful, enigmatic Martha could bring it all tumbling down.

'Snowbirds will turn your image of the Amish upside down. Lucy will grab your heart and run away with it.'--Robin MacCready, winner of the Edgar award for Buried Every year, Lucy waits eagerly for the arrival of the'snowbirds,'the Old Order Amish who come trundling into Florida on buses from the north, bringing Lucy's best friend Alice, with whom she's spent every winter she can remember. This winter is different. At sixteen, Alice is in the middle of'Rumspringa,'a season in which Amish teens try out forbidden temptations, in order to get them out of their system. Lucy is part of a different sect, in which teens aren't allowed such bold experimentation, and she's fighting to keep up as Alice races from one wild party to the next. Then, one night after just such a party, Alice vanishes. Wracked by guilt, Lucy knows that she should have been watching out for Alice, but instead, she was kissing Faron, an Older Order boy shunned by his society. Now, Lucy plunges into a search for her best friend--while also hiding her own secret, which could put her in even more danger.

2017 Christy Award finalist (Visionary category)When Leora Ebersole sees the small plane crash in her Old Order Mennonite community, she has no idea it's a foreshadowing of things to come. When the young pilot, Moses Hughes, regains consciousness, they realize his instruments were destroyed by the same power outage that killed the electricity at the community store, where Englischers are stranded with dead cell phones and cars that won't start.Moses offers a sobering theory, but no one can know how drastically life is about to change. With the only self-sustaining food supply in the region, the Pacifist community is forced to forge an alliance with the handful of stranded Englischers in an effort to protect not only the food but their very lives.In the weeks that follow, Leora, Moses, and the community will be tested as never before, requiring them to make decisions they never thought possible. Whom will they help and whom will they turn away? When the community receives news of a new threat, everyone must decide how far they're willing to go to protect their beliefs and way of life.

The brand-new hilariously quirky mystery in the longrunning Pennsylvania-Dutch series.Deciding that the PennDutch Inn needs to go more upmarket, Magdalena Yoder is delighted to welcome the Earl and Countess Grimsley-Snodgrass and their family as honoured guests, looking forward to the challenge of introducing English nobility to traditional American culture. But, as Magdalena is about to find out, the Grimsley-Snodgrasses are by no means the easiest of guests, and at the same time she has to contend with the discovery of a mummified corpse trapped in her elevator shaft.Then tragedy strikes during a traditional Pennsylvania-Dutch picnic at Stucky Ridge, when one of the Grimsley-Snodgrasses disappears over the edge of Lovers'Leap. Did he fall – or was he pushed? And where is the body…?

A stunning, poetic novel about a nearly overpowering relationship, from the author of the acclaimed short story collection, Places in the World a Woman Could Walk.

Riddled with doubt and lingering regrets, will Suzanne and Paul find strength in God to explore a second chance at love? It wasn't easy to move back to the Old Order Mennonite community from which quiet, responsible Suzanne Zimmerman was shamefully sent away as a pregnant teen. Returning twenty years later to take care of her mother, Suzanne and Alexa—the daughter she raised as her own—have spent months rebuilding relationships with her family. Now with the upcoming wedding of their biological daughter, Suzanne and Paul find themselves drawn to one another once again—but with new challenges to face. They have been single parents with painful pasts. Can Paul and Suzanne find the strength to rebuild the loving relationship that was torn apart by their teen pregnancy so long ago? Suzanne must also let go of Alexa as she heads back to Indianapolis to visit friends--and as her chance to find her birth parents. Leaving the bed-and-breakfast in Suzanne's apprehensive hands, Alexa embarks on a journey that will certainly change her life completely. Can mother and daughter trust God to restore all things in His timing?

When trouble roars into quiet Arborville, Alexa and Anna-Grace find themselves the target for discord and exposed secrets. Can they continue to seek the God of all grace amidst the fog of confusion? Alexa Zimmerman wonders if the Old Order Mennonite community in Arborville, Kansas will ever fully accept her. Her family roots here aren't what anyone thought when she first arrived, but she is hopeful that her culinary and hospitality skills will win the skeptics over. The bed-and-breakfast she's operating needs to succeed so Alexa agrees to allow Briley Forrester, the hotshot reporter from Chicago, to stay as a long-term boarder not knowing his real motives for being amongst the Plain folk. But when Alexa agrees to host her cousin Anna-Grace Braun, the presence of extended family brings out Alexa's insecurities and sets Briley on the trail to uncovering a web of hidden truths. Plans for a secure future and the sweetness of young romance hang in the balance when Alexa and Anna-Grace have to face that their secrets are interconnected, binding the two in ways they could not have imagined. They must trust in a loving, heavenly Father and His plan for their futures.

A brand-new quirky mystery with recipes in the longrunning Pennsylvania-Dutch series.When a bestselling novelist falls face-down dead into Magdalena Yoder's prize-winning apple pie during the village of Hernia's 110th Annual Festival of Pies, there is no shortage of suspects in the subsequent murder investigation. A former guest at Magdalena's PennDutch Inn, the author had made many enemies on publication of her subsequent tell-all book, exposing the faults and foibles of members of the local Amish/Mennonite community, and mocking their way of life. But who was enraged enough to want to poison the acid-tongued writer? Hopelessly out of his depth, Hernia's inexperienced young Chief of Police requests Magdalena's help in uncovering the answer. As she sets about questioning her friends and neighbours, Magdalena discovers that more than one villager has a secret to hide.

Romance blossoms in Sarasota, Florida, in the Mennonite community of Pinecraft. There, three young women find their plain and contented lives disrupted by love. Will Mary find lasting love with Abe, despite the stigma that follows her because of her mother's sins? Can Shelley trust Jeremiah, even though his past—and her parents—are stacked against him? And should Ruthie fall for a man who is not even Mennonite?

Since the day Rhoda Mummau was baptized into the Old Order Mennonite Church and became the head midwife of Hopen Haus, she's been torn between the needs of the unwed mothers under her care and her desire to conceal the secrets of her past. Contact with the outside world could provide medical advantages, but remaining secluded in the community gives her the anonymity she craves.Graduate student Beth Winslow is on a path she never would have chosen. Heartbroken after surrendering a baby to adoption, she devotes herself to her studies until she becomes pregnant again, this time as a surrogate. But when early tests indicate possible abnormalities, Beth is unprepared for the parents'decision to end the pregnancy—and for the fierce love she feels for this unborn child. Desperate, she flees the city and seeks refuge at Hopen House.Past and present collide when a young woman named Amelia arrives to the sweeping countryside bearing secrets of her own. As Amelia's due date draws near, Rhoda must face her past and those she thought she had left behind in order for the healing power of love and forgiveness to set them all free.

Rebecca Eash is just as spirited as her mother Ellie, who readers grew to love in Book 1 of Ellie's People: An Amish Family Saga. Becky works for another Amish family and spends time with her Mennonite friend, Susan Miller. Her gentle days in the 1950s are filled with laundry and canning, barn-raisings, a taffy pull, and quilting bees. But as Susan's brother, James, shows an interest in Becky and their relationship deepens, she becomes embroiled in conflict with her parents, Ellie and David, and the deacon, who don't want to her to marry a Mennonite boy. When James joins the Amish church and they begin planning for their future, everything appears to be working out after all. But then James has a dream from God that he can't ignore, and Becky is faced with the most difficult decision of her life.Book 2 of the Ellie's People: An Amish Family Saga series. Ages 10 and up.Read the Amish novels that Amish people themselves read. Long before Beverly Lewis wrote The Shunningthe Ellie's People series was beloved by young and old readers in Amish and Mennonite communities. Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series will love learning to know the spunky heroines and old-fashioned communities of the Ellie's People series.

2014 “Christian Retailing's Best” award finalist!Raised in an Old Order Mennonite community, Rachel Stoltzfus is a strong-willed single woman, content living apart from mainstream society until whispers stir the moment her belly swells with new life. Refusing to repent and name the partner in her sin, Rachel feels the wrath of the religious sect as she is shunned by those she loves most. She is eventually coerced into leaving by her brother-in-law, the bishop. But secrets run deep in this cloistered community, and the bishop is hiding some of his own, threatening his conscience and his very soul. When the life of Rachel's baby is at stake, however, choices must be made that will bring the darkness to light, forever changing the lives of those who call Copper Creek home.

Bestselling Amish fiction author Jerry S. Eicher (nearly half a million copies sold) returns with the first book in another of his delightful and compelling series.Here is the touching story of an awakening young Amish girl, Katie Raber, who finds she wants more from life than to be known as simply “Emma Raber's daughter.”Emma has refused to remarry since Katie's daett died soon after she was born. And in an effort to keep Katie home, Emma has forbidden her from participating in the rumspringa tradition.When widower Jesse Mast calls for Mamm's hand in marriage, Katie hopes to move into a new phase of life and leave the old “Emma Raber's daughter” behind. But Emma is having none of it, and Katie must consider abandoning all hope of ever changing her mamm's bitterness or of ever having popular Ben Yoder notice her. Out of sheer frustration, she begins attending nearby Mennonite youth gatherings.Sparks fly when Jesse's children object fiercely to the attentions their daett is paying to Emma Raber. And widowed Ruth Hochstetler makes her own move for Jesse Mast's hand.Book one in the Emma Raber's Daughter series.

'Pat Mestern's fictional works are among the most rewarding and most pleasing published today. Her historical novels conjure up a time long gone and characters long dead. They never fail to embrace the sorts of scandals, dreams and secrets that can haunt nearly every family in every walk of life for many tomorrows.'--J. Marshall Craig, screen writer and film directorBased on a true story. From the sophistication and glamour of upper-class New York City life during the roaring twenties, Erie Carliss travels to the rural Mennonite country in Wellington County, Ontario to discover her secret past. In the search for answers, Erie finds herself in the middle of a power struggle among whiskey runners and gangsters. The new friendships and rekindled interests of old acquaintances blossom. This is an exciting and moving story of a young woman coming to terms with her heritage and making a choice between the life she was raised in and a life she was born into. Pat Mestern has once again delivered a masterpiece of genuine, relatable characters whose journeys unveil more than they could have ever imagined. In this sequel to Anna: Child of the Poor House, Rachael's Legacy takes the reader through the intertwined lives of Erie and Anna Carliss and the Mennonite community. Author of seven fiction books prior, Pat's storytelling ability shines through and wraps you up in an exhilarating experience of mystery, family, history, and love.

Follow the lives of the Mennonites in Harmony, Kansas, and outsider Gracie Temple, who comes to live among them. Gracie has trouble fitting in from the start when she inherits a heavy secret from her estranged uncle. Then just when Harmony starts to feel like home, her graphic design career puts her in a suspicious position that threatens the town's way of life. And when life and love are finally falling in place, Gracie's attempts to help a Mennonite teen realize her dreams backfire. Will Gracie ever be in harmony with the town she has grown to love?

In book three, Katy Lambright thinks everything in her life is finally going smoothly—at school, she has a group of friends who understand her, while at home life with her new mom isn't as bad as she'd feared. But everything begins to come apart when Katy is chosen, as a joke, to be the sophomore representative on the homecoming court. With this comes the pressure to conform to what is expected of her in that position—a fancy (and revealing) dress, makeup, and a focus on appearance. It also means involvement in the homecoming dance, which goes against the beliefs of her Old Order Mennonite sect. Adding to this is the fact Katy would need to attend the dance with a sophomore male representative—Bryce Porter, her crush. Katy must decide whether to follow the desires of her heart, or the leadings of her faith.

In the final book of the Katy Lambright Series, Katy's worlds collide. Shelby Nuss, Katy's best friend outside of her sect, breaks her ankle right before leaving with her family on a mission trip. Unable to travel, Shelby decides to stay with Katy on her farm, which delights Katy to no end. Finally, parts of her world are coming together! But when Shelby is in Schellberg full-time, things with Katy's other best friend, Annika, once again become strained, and Katy's issues with Caleb Penning get worse. Added to this, the town elders will soon decide if Katy can continue on in the secular high school next year—soon, Katy may be forced to decide what world she really belongs in.

Born out of wedlock to a former Mennonite girl, Mary Penner lived on the edge of society until the day her mother was killed in a drug bust. Sent back to her grandparents at age fourteen, she found fitting in with their simple society very difficult. Abe Glick has been fascinated with Mary Penner since the first day she walked into his life. But capturing her heart will be a difficult task since Mary keeps it locked up tight, hidden behind walls of self-imposed guilt and pain.

Rudy Wiebe's latest novel is at once an enthralling saga of the Mennonite people and one man's emotional voyage into his heritage and his own self-discovery. Ambitious in its historical sweep, tender and humane, Sweeter Than All the World takes us on an extraordinary odyssey never before fully related in a contemporary novel.The novel tells the story of the Mennonite people from the early days of persecution in sixteenth-century Netherlands, and follows their emigration to Danzig, London, Russia, and the Americas, through the horrors of World War II, to settlement in Paraguay and Canada. It is told episodically in a double-stranded narrative. The first strand consists of different voices of historical figures. The other narrative voice is that of Adam Wiebe, born in Saskatchewan in 1935, whom we encounter at telling stages of his life: as a small boy playing in the bush, as a student hunting caribou a week before his wedding, and as a middle-aged man carefully negotiating a temporary separation from his wife. As Adam faces the collapse of his marriage and the disappearance of his daughter, he becomes obsessed with understanding his ancestral past. Wiebe meshes the history of a people with the story of a modern family, laying bare the complexities of desire and family love, religious faith and human frailty.The past comes brilliantly alive, beginning with the horrors of the Reformation, when Weynken Claes Wybe is burned at the stake for heretical views on Communion. We are caught up in the great events of each century, as we follow in the footsteps of Adam's forebears: the genius engineer who invented the cable-car system; the artist Enoch Seeman, who found acclamation at the royal court in London after having been forbidden to paint by the Elders; Anna, who endures the great wagon trek across the Volga in 1860, leaving behind her hopes of marriage so that her brothers will escape conscription in the Prussian army; and Elizabeth Katerina, caught in the Red Army's advance into Germany when rape and pillage are the rewards given to soldiers. The title of the novel, taken from a hymn, reflects the beauty and sorrow of these stories of courage. In a startling act of invention, Sweeter Than All the World sets one man's quest for family and love against centuries of turmoil.Rudy Wiebe first wrote of Mennonite resettlement in his 1970 epic novel The Blue Mountains of China. Since then, much of his work has focused on re-imagining the history of the Canadian Northwest. In Sweeter Than All the World, as in many of his most acclaimed novels, Wiebe has sought out real historical characters to tell an extraordinary story. William Keith, a University of Toronto professor and author of a book about Wiebe, writes: “Wiebe has a knack for divining wells of human feeling in historical sources.” Here, all the main characters share his name, and the history is one to which he belongs. Moreover, alongside those flashbacks into history is revealed an utterly compelling contemporary story of a man whose background is not totally unlike the author's own. Wiebe sets his narrative against his two favourite backdrops: the northern Alberta landscape, and the shared memories of the Mennonite people. Sweeter Than All the World is a compassionate, erudite and stimulating work of fiction that shares the deep-rooted concerns of all of Wiebe's work: how to make history live in our imagination, and how we can best live our lives.

Katy Lambright's life transforms when she leaves the Mennonite school and enters a local high school. Is she prepared to face the secular world and teenage life beyond her community? New Club, New Crush … New Mom? From bestselling fiction writer Kim Vogel Sawyer comes Katy's Debate, the latest in the Katy Lambright series for young adults. Just as Katy is feeling settled in her new school, everything falls apart at home. Her father, believing she needs a mother, starts courting a woman Katy refuses to accept. Tensions rise as Katy schemes to send the woman packing. Meanwhile, the pressure builds at school as Katy joins the debate team, encounters a teammate's scorn, and faces her growing feelings for a boy her father will never accept. Can Katy prove she doesn't need a mother's guidance even as she discovers more of what the world offers?

The Narrow Path is a story about a couple who must face their differences and learn to work together as they look toward a lifetime of love. Miranda Klassen's Mennonite church is big and modern and she loves the mixture of faith, action, and activity. But in order to follow her dream she moves across the country to a small town to organize the 75th anniversary celebration of an Old Order Mennonite church. Ted Wiebe has been assigned to assist and guide Miranda, feeling good that his church has chosen another Mennonite. But except for sharing the same basic faith and denomination, their churches have nothing else in common. His church embraces old-style roots, so Ted expects to find someone similar at the airport: a woman who never wears pants, no body piercing (including pierced ears), no makeup, and wearing a head covering as a sign of modesty, someone else who lives in accordance with old-fashioned values. But the woman who acknowledges him is wearing unreasonably high and outlandishly expensive shoes, denim jeans, and makeup, including bright red lipstick. As she gets off the plane she's fiddling with an iPod and yapping on the cell phone. When Miranda enters Ted's church and community she feels like she's been transported back into Little House On The Prairie. Ted is supposed to help Miranda fit in, and Miranda is supposed to help his church reach out into the community. When it's time to start planning and organizing for the celebration, then the fun really begins.

The Narrow Path is a story about a couple who must face their differences and learn to work together as they look toward a lifetime of love. Miranda Klassen's Mennonite church is big and modern and she loves the mixture of faith, action, and activity. But in order to follow her dream she moves across the country to a small town to organize the 75th anniversary celebration of an Old Order Mennonite church. Ted Wiebe has been assigned to assist and guide Miranda, feeling good that his church has chosen another Mennonite. But except for sharing the same basic faith and denomination, their churches have nothing else in common. His church embraces old-style roots, so Ted expects to find someone similar at the airport: a woman who never wears pants, no body piercing (including pierced ears), no makeup, and wearing a head covering as a sign of modesty, someone else who lives in accordance with old-fashioned values. But the woman who acknowledges him is wearing unreasonably high and outlandishly expensive shoes, denim jeans, and makeup, including bright red lipstick. As she gets off the plane she's fiddling with an iPod and yapping on the cell phone. When Miranda enters Ted's church and community she feels like she's been transported back into Little House On The Prairie. Ted is supposed to help Miranda fit in, and Miranda is supposed to help his church reach out into the community. When it's time to start planning and organizing for the celebration, then the fun really begins.

Katy has always enjoyed life in her small Mennonite community, but she longs to learn more than her school can offer. After getting approval from her elders, Katy starts her sophomore year at the public high school in town, where she meets new friends and encounters perspectives much different than her own. But as Katy begins to find her way in the outside world, her relationships at home become restrained. Can she find a balance between her two worlds?

In the sequel to Simple Secrets, watch how a raging current of deceit runs through the once peaceful Mennonite community of Harmony, Kansas. As soon as Gracie decides to stay in town and take freelance work involving a local land developer, the townspeople blame her for bringing on this change that could ruin life as they know it. Gracie's motives in romance with Sam, in helping an oppressed teenager, and in trying to make a living are all suddenly drawing suspicion. Should she leave or stay and fight for what she has come to love?

Can graphic designer Gracie Temple have it all: the big city life and a job at a successful advertising firm? Just when she feels life coming together she receives an unknown uncle's inheritance in a quiet Kansas Mennonite community. The house comes with a dark legacy and a cast of interesting neighbors, including farmer Sam Goodrich. Can Gracie shake off the dust of this town or will its secret charms pull her in to stay?

Trina Muller has always had a passion for healing abandoned and injured animals. Her parents encourage this tenderness towards God's creatures until Trina confesses her dream of going to veterinary college. Why can't she accept that God's will is for her to be a wife and mother? Graham Ortmann loves Trina, but how can he possibly marry someone who is determined to go against the dictates of the Old Order Mennonite fellowship? Trina can never be happy if she is outside of God's will for her life. But which life will she choose-one with Graham or one in pursuit of her heart's calling? Blessings is book 3 in the Sommerfeld Trilogy. Other books in the trilogy include Bygones: Book 1 and Beginnings: Book 2.

Widower Marie Koeppler and her grown daughter Beth reluctantly return to the Mennonite community Marie abandoned twenty-three years ago. Soon after their arrival in Sommerfeld, a series of mysterious thefts raises the community's suspicions against the'outsiders.'Can Marie prove their innocence, or will she be forced to flee once more? Henry Braun thought he'd gotten his love for Marie out of his system, but soon begins to wonder if she's stolen more than his heart. When it's all said and done, can Henry and Marie let bygones be bygones, or has their love been doomed from the start? Bygones is book 1 in the Sommerfeld Trilogy. Other books in the trilogy include Beginnings: Book 2 and Blessings: Book 3.

Beth Quinn is struggling to find a place to belong in the Old Order Mennonite Community of Sommerfeld, Kansas. When she starts a business designing stained glass windows, two men-one a Mennonite, the other not-begin to vie for her attention. Andrew Braun, a member of the Sommerfeld fellowship, is dedicated to family and faith. Sean McCauley, the son of a successful businessman, may only be interested in Beth's talents. Will Beth look to her heavenly Father to fill the emptiness within, or will her desperate quest for love shatter more than one heart? Beginnings is book 2 in the Sommerfeld Trilogy. Other books in the trilogy include Bygones: Book 1 and Blessings: Book 3.

This “darkly funny and provocative” coming-of-age novel balances grief and hope in the voice of a witty teenage girl whose Canadian family is shattered by fundamentalist Christianity (O, The Oprah Magazine). From the author of Women Talking—now an Academy Award-winning film starring Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand, and Jessie Buckley “Half of our family, the better–looking half, is missing,” Nomi Nickel tells us at the beginning of A Complicated Kindness. Left alone with her sad, peculiar father, her days are spent piecing together why her mother and sister have disappeared and contemplating her inevitable career at Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on the outskirts of East Village. Not the East Village in New York City where Nomi would prefer to live, but an oppressive town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba, Canada. This darkly funny novel is the world according to the unforgettable Nomi, a bewildered and wry sixteen–year–old trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion and in the shattered remains of a family it destroyed. In Nomi's droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story of an eccentric, loving family that falls apart as each member lands on a collision course with the only community any of them have ever known. A work of fierce humor and tragedy by a writer who has taken the American market by storm, this searing, tender, comic testament to family love will break your heart.

Rev. ed. of: Happy as the grass was green. c1971.

Set in a small Mennonite community in Pennsylvania in 1896, this novel depicts the reaction of the'plain people'to various modern encroachments. Publishers Weekly called it,'A beautifully told lesson for the contemporary reader in how any community adapts to a changing world.'Portrays tragedy and crisis in a small Pennsylvania community in 1896 from the point of view of a 15-year-old Mennonite boy in the whirlpool of his first encounter with death. In the spring of 1896, Silas Hershey was 15. He worked hard six days a week alongside his family in their corn and tobacco fields. On Sundays he gossiped with his cousin Sam, eyeing the girls from a corner of the Paradise Mennonite Church yard, and several evenings a week he drove his sister Barbie and cousin Biney to'special meetings'at nearby churches. Then there were the troubled romances of both Barbie and older brother Hen. But social and political change was flooding the country, and in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the ripples lapped up over the church steps and into the pulpits. The special evening meetings which to Silas and Sam were little more than out-of-the-ordinary social occasions in fact signalled a radical change in Mennonite belief and tradition. All promoted by the'Western preachers,'as Silas called them. Events come to a climax one summer Saturday night when Barbie and her young man, Enos Barge, are coming home from a party and a train hits their buggy at a dangerous crossing. The Western preachers capitalize on the incident; neither Barbie nor Enos had yet joined church, and the revivalists point to them as examples of what can happen to those who are not'saved.'People convert in flocks. And the Hersheys, to whom Barbie was their light and joy, are left stunned by grief, struggling to keep a shattered family from disintegrating. Sara Stambaugh tells the story with both sympathy and candor. She also succeeds remarkably well in capturing the point of view, language, and feelings of an adolescent Mennonite boy, caught in the whirlpool of a first encounter with death. Her images evoke a time and place so clearly that the reader can almost smell the arbutus and feel the crackle of ice underfoot.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.