Adventure stories from Amish life. Fiction grounded in real customs and traditions.
April 1837. Jakob Miller leaves a home he will never return to.
First ten days — dirt roads and farms. Then the mountains begin.
The Susquehanna swollen by spring rains. No ford. No bridge.
On the third night in the mountains Jakob first heard the howling. By morning a sheep was gone.
At the pass the column meets a hunter who knows what the map does not.
Three days of rain. No road. Food running out. Beiler is silent.
Day forty-three. The column emerges from the forest into a clearing. Black earth, a stream, silence.
Elam Stoltzfus gains the right to try the outside world. And he already knows where he'll go first.
Philadelphia. Electric light at night. First hamburger. First loneliness.
Six months in the outside world. Elam knows the answer but is afraid to say it.
August, dry storm, and Josiah Troyer's barn is burning.
Saturday they rested. Sunday — service. Monday — work.
Six AM. Two hundred men. By sunset — the barn stands.
1693. Jakob Hochstetler sits in a cell for baptizing adults.
Through the Alps, at night, children in arms. To Alsace.
Alsace took them in. But Jakob knew: it wouldn't last. Next stop — America.
Emma is eighteen. Twenty-three students. No pedagogy textbook, no plan.
Fourteen-year-old rebel. Last year. Doesn't want school — wants the farm.
January blizzard. Children at school. Road closed. Teacher decides.
Old Moses sells his last horse. A story about letting go.
The English asked Josiah to build a bridge over the creek. The community objects.
Two weeks. Oak, stone, sweat. The English stand and watch.
Bridge is ready. First across was the school bus.
Rachel found a medical handbook in the attic. She's twelve.
Eighth grade done. Rachel goes to the midwife.
Rachel stands between Amish midwifery and English medicine. Chooses both.
Amish children try store-bought ice cream for the first time. Unimpressed.
Lightning struck a pole, and electricity came to the Amish for three hours.
The son who left writes to his father after five years of silence.
Twenty women. Three thousand patches. One quilt. One story.