Delivers what it promises—an outsider’s view but an intimate portrait nonetheless. Too bad the author is so abysmally stupid about some things that aren’t “Amish”—like he doesn’t know you can use corn cobs for kindlin’. So sometimes he’s in awe of things that are just common country stuff and not “Amish” at all. But he has a very balanced and I think realistic view of both the advantages and disadvantages of very “Amish” things like community: Sure, if you are Amish you have a strong community that will help you if you need something, but on the other side of that, you have a community that keeps an eye on you and judges you and tells you what to do (and may well do things that we English would consider horrible, like keep women in abusive relationships and very circumscribed circumstances).

But the thing I was most curious about was what sorts of repercussions his “Samuel” and his family, who were who the book was really about—a book that the “community”, the “church”, would not approve or appreciate.