Life in author Loren Beachy's Amish community brims with old-fashioned box socials, smart-alecky students, and pranks involving pink duct tape and black pepper. Meet the young women who manage to be late for church twice in one day and the man who plans to fight drowsiness by jogging beside his horse and buggy. Cheer for Beachy and his cousins in cut-throat baseball games, and join community members as they surround and support a family in their loss. With the witty warmth of small-town storytellers like Garrison Keillor and Jan Karon, Beachy invites readers into his life as a creative,...

Fewer than one hundred outsiders have joined the Old-Order Amish--and stayed--since 1950. Marlene C. Miller is one of them. In this rare memoir, Marlene recounts her unhappy and abusive childhood, how she throws herself into cheerleading and marching band, and how she falls in love with Johnny, the gentle young Amish man who helps her lace her ice skates.

Against the wishes of both sets of parents, Marlene and Johnny get married and begin a family. Follow the author on this unusual journey to find out how God's love called her out of bitterness and depression and into the...

Young Amish homemaker Marianne Jantzi invites readers into her family's life on the snowy plains of Ontario. The mother of four young children and wife of a storekeeper, Jantzi writes about her daily routines and heartfelt faith with equal measures of wit and warmth. Sewing, cleaning, cooking, gardening, and helping to manage the store take up most hours in her day, but Jantzi finds time to pen columns for the Connection, a magazine beloved by Amish and Mennonite readers across the United States and Canada. Never sugarcoating the frustrations of motherhood, Jantzi tells it like it is,...