About the Book
Separate
from the World is a story of a rift between two Amish factions, one
that favors the use of medicine and that participates in a college study
of genetic traits particular to the Amish community, and the other that
rejects any outside influence.
P. L. Gaus takes us inside a separate culture and, in a manner both
gentle and grim, highlights the complex relationship of the Amish and
the “English” as they live inside or outside each other’s
orbits.
****
As another college year draws to an end, Professor Michael Branden is weary after nearly thirty years of teaching. Sitting in his office on a warm spring day, he receives an unexpected visit from an Amish man who claims his brother, a dwarf like himself, has been murdered. Their discussion of the odd details of the case is interrupted by a commotion on campus, which turns out to be the apparent suicide of a young woman, who, it seems, has leapt to her death from the college bell tower.
The investigations of these two deaths become intertwined as Professor Branden again teams up with his colleagues Pastor Cal Troyer and Sheriff Bruce Robertson to seek explanations for these bizarre events
****Reviews****
With each new mystery, P. L. Gaus treats us to yet another view of life among the Old Order Amish in Wayne County, Ohio. But Separate from the World feels darker than some of his previous books.... (H)e has great admiration for the Amish themselves, writing with quiet gravity about aspects of their lives rarely shown to strangers.”
— New York Times Book Review
“In Gaus’s excellent sixth Ohio Amish mystery.... a convincing plot and credible, sympathetic characters make another winner in this fine regional series.”
Starred Review — Publishers Weekly
“Two unexplained deaths bring home to history professor Michael Branden (A Prayer for the Night, 2006, etc.) the powers and limitations of modern science.... A perceptive look at problems that have no easy solutions.”
Starred Review — Kirkus Reviews