Separate from the World: An Ohio Amish Mystery by P

Separate from the World: An Ohio Amish Mystery

by P.L. Gaus

Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008

Page numbers refer to paperback version

Author:

Delaware, Ohio-born Paul L. Gaus received his B.S. from Miami University in 1971, and his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1975. He spent two years in a post-doctoral appointment at SUNY Stonybrook before moving to Ohio to teach at the College of Wooster in 1977. Gaus is currently Professor of Chemistry Emeritus.

Readers will be more familiar with Gaus as a mystery writer than as a professor of chemistry. He is currently author of a series of six volumes in his Ohio Amish Mystery series, which he began in 1993 with the encouragement of Tony Hillerman. Gaus had always been interested in the Amish, and had in fact taught a course at Wooster in American sub-cultures, including the Navajo, Branch Dravidians, Black Muslims, Japanese, and Amish. The first volume of Gaus’s Amish series was Blood of the Prodigal, which was published in 1999; it was followed by Broken English (2000), Clouds without Rain (2001), Cast a Blue Shadow (2003), A Prayer for the Night (2006), and Separate from the World (2008).

Gaus has spent considerable time with the Amish, which he says has helped tune his ear to the language and enabled him to write such realistic Amish characters in his Ohio novels:

It comes from 20 years of hanging around with them. Many of my friends are Amish, so I have very good sources on Amish life and dialect. I also spend a lot of time listing words and phrases that are common in Holmes County, and have notes and records of words that a character might use in any given situation. This is the scientist in me, for I've tried to maintain uniformity and believability in every character. (Publishers Weekly, May 21, 2001)

Gaus also maintains a blog called “P. L. Gaus’s Ohio Amish Journal,” in which he comments on life in rural Ohio, his Amish neighbors, and his literary work (http://blogs.ohioswallow.com/gaus/). Gaus still lives in Wooster, Ohio, with his wife Madonna.

Summary:

The books starts with a scene set in mid-April, in which a small Amish child named Albert Erb is trying to tell the adults something important. Then, the action starts on May 11, when Professor Michael Branden’s morning of dreary grading and morose contemplation is suddenly interrupted by an Amish man named Enos Erb, who insists that his brother Benjamin Erb has been murdered in the nearby Amish community of Calmoutier (pronounced Kal-Mooch). When the noise of screams and sirens disrupts their conversation, the two men look out the window and see that a girl has jumped to her death from the college’s bell tower, and a young man still at the top seems determined to follow. The police stop him from jumping, and Branden realizes that he taught both students: the dead girl is Cathy Billett, and the police are taking her boyfriend, Eddie Hunt-Myers, away. As Professor Aiden Newhouse tries to turn the crime scene into a demonstration, Branden tries to steer his friend Sheriff Bruce Robertson away from a PR nightmare.

Branden is disturbed by the morning’s events, and goes to see his friend Pastor Cal Troyer, but Cal’s morning has been as eventful as Branden’s: he has received a letter from a nineteen-year-old girl claiming to be his long-lost daughter. Although distracted by the letter, Cal is able to explain to Branden that a controversy threatens to tear the Amish community apart. Enos Erb – and secretly, also his dead brother Benny – are Moderns, a pro-science group led by Preacher John Hershberger, and are participating in blood testing with Professor Lobrelli in an attempt to address the hereditary medical problems in the Amish community; their brother, Israel Erb, stands with Bishop Andy Miller and the Antis, who resist all things tied to science, modernity and the outside world.

The next day, Professor Branden goes to see Professor Nina Lobrelli at her lab and asks about the gene therapies she is working on for the Amish. She admits to having students take blood samples from the Amish as a way of looking at recessive genes, but her work is all basic research and not intended as a step on the road to a “cure” or therapy to address hereditary diseases and genetic defects in the Amish. She also tells Branden that she knew both Cathy and Eddie: Cathy was her assistant and took blood samples from the Amish, and Eddie took a course with her and wrote a thesis for Aidan Newhouse that was so good that Lobrelli nominated it for a top scholarly prize.

Later, when Branden goes back to the Erb property to talk to Enos again, no one will open the door for him. Instead, he and a non-Amish neighbor of the Erbs come across five-year-old Mattie Erb tied up near the clothes and hair belonging to her cousin, four-year-old Albert Erb, who seems to have been kidnapped. Branden calls the police to start a search, and questioning reveals that a call had arrived on Benny’s cell phone from a man who said if the families tried to find the children, they would be killed. The police are dismayed when the Amish say that they destroyed Benny’s cell phone, making it impossible to trace the threatening call and find the kidnapper, and then hid in their houses praying for several hours rather than raising the alarm about little Albert’s disappearance.

After commencement, a late-night visit from the college registrar makes Branden curious about Eddie’s senior thesis, which turns out to be about the current religious debate and possible split in the Amish community in Calmoutier. After reading it, Branden realizes that it seems likely that Eddie fabricated his research, and may have used Benny Erb as his sole source of information for his thesis. Branden races to uncover the truth and protect the Amish from Eddie, who apparently gave Benny the cell phone. When little Albert Erb reappears unharmed, the Amish finally admit that they traded the cell phone for his safe return, and the community unites in a desire to heal. The two religious factions resolve their differences and agree that the use of English medicine is wrong for the Amish community in Calmoutier. For them, the case is closed, whether Eddie is caught or not.

For Branden, however, a killer is on the loose, and he finds Eddie, whom he now sees as a sociopathic killer, where he least expects to find him: in Branden’s own house. Eddie has tied up Cal Troyer and Branden’s wife Caroline, and intends to kill them all. In the end, however, Eddie’s arrogance is his undoing: after he foolishly unties Caroline, she is able to retrieve the Brandens’ gun and kill him.

Questions:

While answers are provided, there is no presumption that you have been given the last word. Readers bring their own personalities to the books that they are examining. What is obvious and compelling to one reader may be invisible to the next. The questions that have been selected provide one reasonable access to the text; the answers are intended to give you examples of what a reflective reader might think. The variety of possible answers is one of the reasons we find book discussions such a rewarding activity.

How does the first chapter set up the rest of the story?

In some ways, the first chapter is different from all the other chapters in the book because it doesn’t follow Professor Branden, or any non-Amish person. Instead, we follow a frustrated, four-year-old Albert Erb as he tries to get the attention of the adults and tell them about Benny dead on the floor of the store. It’s radically different than all the other chapters in perspective, but in other important ways it sets the stage for all the events which follow.

The novel reminds readers over and over again how very different the Amish community is from the “English” world around it. One way Gaus makes that difference clear from the start is by beginning the story within the Amish community and the perspective of Albert Erb. Albert’s experience is typical of the treatment of small children in any society: he is desperate to tell adults something he finds very important, but the adults are too busy to listen. In Albert’s case, however, the frustration is compounded by the rules of behavior governing children among the Amish. Albert has to wait for permission to speak to adults, including his mother, and he goes from one adult to another as they prepare meals, milk cows, and try to finish other tasks, never finding anyone who will turn from their work and listen. Albert is also complaining in the language of the Amish: Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German. Gaus translates little Albert’s comments about Uncle Benny for us, but seeing the original Pennsylvania Dutch on the page reminds us that the Amish don’t just have a different way of life, but even their own language. Every little detail, from the words that come out of little Albert’s mouth to the round-brimmed hat he hangs up meticulously before trying to get the attention of the adults draws attention to how different Albert’s world probably is from the reader’s own.

Besides setting the scene in this way, the novel’s first chapter presents the discovery of the first murder victim, Benny Erb, as well as early clues to what happened to him. Albert smells something he calls an “English aroma” in the store, which seems to point to a non-Amish killer right from the start (p. 3). There are early hints that something is wrong in the Amish community when Albert wonders why he isn’t allowed to play with Mattie anymore (p. 1). We also learn one key thing about Benny: he was a “chatterbox” (p. 4). As we later learn, Benny liked to talk and liked to talk to outsiders, which made him the perfect person for Eddie Hunt-Myers to interview for his senior thesis on the growing religious rift in the Amish community.

As in most thrillers, the first chapter sets the stage and presents the crime, and this novel is no different. Each short chapter is dated and even time-stamped, and builds suspense as it races towards its conclusion. Each chapter ends with a hook to make readers want to keep reading and find out more, and the story moves at a quick pace, following the urgency Branden feels as he races not just to discover the killer, but in the last chapters of the book, after it is clear that Eddie is guilty of one or more of the crimes, to find Eddie before he hurts someone else or leaves the area. In this respect, Separate from the World is a typical thriller, and the first chapter is like most first chapters of thrillers, despite the chapter’s different perspective.

How many different communities are there in the novel?

There is an obvious split in the novel between Amish and “English” folk, but there are actually oppositions between many other communities that help shape the story. Conversations between Professor Branden and the sheriff expose the tensions between the students, teachers and administrators at the college and the rest of the town. After Sheriff Robertson and his men apprehend Eddie at the top of the bell tower, the sheriff asks Branden, “He one of your little rich boys, Mike?” (p. 17). This is the sheriff’s tone throughout when referring to Eddie and everyone else associated with Millersburg College. His relationship with Branden only seems possible because he, Branden and Cal Troyer had been friends since kindergarten, allowing Branden to serve as a bridge across the chasm that divides college and non-college in the sheriff’s mind.

Cal Troyer, as a minister, serves as a bridge between the Amish and English communities, and it is he who explains to Professor Branden that Amish families are taking sides in a religious debate that threatens to split the community in two. As homogenous as the Amish may seem, they are bitterly divided on the issue of how much science is good for the community and within the bounds of their reading of the Bible. Enos tries to explain what the “Moderns” believe: “Preacher Hershberger says it doesn’t make any sense that we’d use Saint-John’s-wort to pick up a mood and not be willing to take modern drugs for depression. He says it’s the same thing, only better, and we’ve been using herbs for centuries” (p. 55). Of course, the Amish “Antis” believe the Amish must remain submissive to God’s will and not be tempted to fight God’s plan, however hard it seems, with man-made medicines and scientific advances. It’s a debate so fierce and so fundamental that it may cause Preacher Hershberger and the rest of the moderns to split off and form their own congregation.

How are names important?

Many of the names in the book tell you something about the character. Very often, only titles are used: Branden is “Professor Branden, or simply “Professor,” and Sheriff Bruce Robertson is “the sheriff.” The religious leaders in the Amish community are very often referred to as the preacher and the bishop. These titles are important markers of the role each man has in his community, and his part in the story.

“Erb” may be a typical Amish name, but the German word Erbe means heritage or inheritance. This is a particularly appropriate name because the story is about the Amish heritage, both in the sense of maintaining that heritage and in the sense of the genetic inheritance that leaves the Amish predisposed to certain skin disorders, dwarfism, and Parkinson’s disease. Eddie Hunt-Myers III is a name that both sounds “English” to Amish ears and reminds us of the family’s legacy at the college. As the college president reminds Branden, Eddie’s father is an alumnus and a major donor. As the story unfolds, we see what comes of Eddie’s heritage too: privilege gives him the keys to the bell tower, the assistance of the college president, and the sense that he can do whatever he wants.

What purpose does Aidan Newhouse serve in the story?

Aidan Newhouse is depicted as a melodramatic buffoon, and in the eyes of certain characters, something much worse. The novel portrays him as a 1960s radical who refuses to recognize that times have changed. Newhouse teaches courses on the 1960s and political protest, and wants nothing more than an excuse to relive his glory days. He protests anything and everything, and when his usual Iraq war protest rally is disrupted by Cathy Billett’s death, he and his students focus their anger on the police trying to remove the body and complain of police misconduct, chanting “NO COPS! NO COPS!” (p. 19). Newhouse is delighted for the opportunity to protest, and cares very little that a student lies dead in the midst of it all:

A core of a dozen people, students mostly but some faculty too, formed a circle around their leader and kept vigil while he lectured about cops, Vietnam, and “the movement.” This was grand theater to him – the true classroom. It was a teachable moment, served up to him more perfectly than he himself could have devised. It was a true pity about the girl, he thought, but he would no more waste this moment than he would surrender his professorship. (p. 20)

Such scenes make him seem vaguely threatening, but overall he appears ridiculous, particularly after authorities are forced to abandon an attempt to handcuff Newhouse and he afterwards wears a single handcuff on his wrist to commencement and waves it in the air throughout the ceremony – or at least until he can’t hold it up any longer (pp. 118-121).

We also learn late in the novel that Newhouse is a slacker: shoddy in monitoring his students’ work, and not reviewing Eddie’s thesis or research notes the way he should have. If he had, he would have detected Eddie’s cheating long before degrees were awarded. That revelation calls the integrity of his entire lengthy teaching career into doubt, and further discredits him.

So why does Gaus include Aidan Newhouse in the story? He doesn’t advance the plot substantially, as it would have been easy enough to have had some overworked professor cut a few corners reviewing senior theses and overlook the problems with Eddie’s. He could be a sign of the author’s own politics and that Gaus is simply holding a particular type of intellectually lazy left-wing university professor up to ridicule. There are signs, however, that there is a larger statement being made through Newhouse about political causes, protests, and treatment of the military, for without Newhouse, none of these notes would likely be struck in a novel about a murder in the Amish community.

There are certainly moments of tension between Newhouse and characters who are in uniform and/or have military experience, chief among them Ben Capper, the college’s head of security. Gaus’s protagonist, Professor Branden, is not a military man, but Cal Troyer was, and Branden identifies with the experiences of soldiers – much more so than he does Aidan Newhouse’s causes. After seeing Cathy dead, “Branden tried to get his mind to settle on the dreadful present, but he couldn’t catch up to the pace of his thoughts. He recognized this mental state. He taught about it in his Civil War classes – the fog of battle, brought on by horror and panic” (p. 13). This fog lasts for pages: “He was stunned like a soldier in the fog” (p. 21). Pat Lance, Sheriff Robertson’s able new deputy, is just back from duty in Iraq (p. 30). Ben Capper, who although a bit gung-ho seems a sympathetic figure compared to Newhouse, sees yellow ribbons among the tributes to Cathy Billett after her death. He asks, “Do they [the protesters] even know what a yellow ribbon means?” (p. 60). Again, Newhouse and his gang of blind followers look foolish.

There is one moment in the story when Gaus seems to stop painting the protesters as foolish and the ex-soldiers as noble. Cal Troyer and Ben Capper discuss Newhouse’s Iraq protests and Cal finds a road between protesting everything blindly and defending everything blindly:

“You know Newhouse has led Iraq war protest marches down at the courthouse?” Capper asked.

Cal nodded and said gently, “I think he’s got a point, Ben.”

Capper nursed his antagonism while he considered that statement. Making an obvious effort to contain his anger, he said, “Nam makes us brothers, Cal. You and I are not going to have an argument over Iraq.”

Cal offered his hand, and Capper took it forcefully. He pulled Cal to himself and embraced him. Then he turned and walked out of the oak grove, head high, shoulders back, fists clenching and releasing at his sides. (pp. 60-61)

If Aidan Newhouse’s behavior suggests a problem, perhaps Cal Troyer’s response suggests what Gaus thinks is the correct path: a thoughtful opinion on a controversial topic combined with understanding and love for people on both sides of the fence. The Amish are also deeply committed to the idea of nonviolence – so much so that in the end they show no interest in discovering who killed Benny Erb and kidnapped the children and reject the English idea of justice entirely. It may be a position that readers find hard to fathom, but here, too, we are offered a look at a thoughtful, meaningful nonviolent position, as opposed to the hollow posturing of Aidan Newhouse.

What characteristics distinguish the Amish from their English neighbors?

The daily lives of the Amish are obviously completely different from the English, from dress to transportation to farm life. Some of the most interesting insights in the novel are related to how differently the Amish think and feel, however.

We come face to face with the Amish in the novel’s first chapter, but it is from the point of view of a small boy. The first Amish adult we hear from is Enos Erb. When he goes to visit Mike Branden at his office, he seems out of place – both because a college professor’s office is not the natural place to find an Amish man, and also because the reason he came is not something that should move a member of the Amish community. He has come because he feels that his brother was killed, and he wants justice:

When Lawrence brought in two mugs of coffee, Branden was studying the Amish man’s eyes for the turmoil and intensity behind the dwarf’s surprisingly frank words. But that very English frankness had quickly been replaced by Amish diffidence – the plain people’s peaceful resignation to life, which accepts tragedy and fortune as flip sides of the same coin. It is a particularly Amish brand of fatalism, bordering on Zen, and Branden knew it well.

[…] But Branden had seen a flash of English hunger when the man had spoken. It was a cold, hollow hunger for English justice, and it would be a sin of contemplation if shown openly to his Amish brothers and sisters. The little man had come in search of the kind of justice that the English world could give him. That Branden, Troyer, and Robertson could give him. And this was a very non-Amish thing for him to have done. (p. 9)

By the end of the novel, of course, Enos has returned to an Amish acceptance of things as they are, even before his brother’s killer has been brought to justice, but his early discontent highlights the Amish way that he is straying from in his desire for worldly justice.

The Amish community takes the Biblical injunction to be separate from the world very seriously. It is at the heart of the Amish way of life:

Hershberger repeated, “’Be ye separate’ from the world, Professor Branden. It is not a request. It is God’s command on our lives.”

Branden asked, “Aren’t surrender and submission nothing more than fatalism?”

“Without faith, yes,” Hershberger answered.

Branden followed with, “Isn’t faith, in the presence of danger like this, just an excuse, John? Nothing more than an elaborate cop-out?”

Hershberger answered softly, “Not if it is redemptive. Not if it is restorative, Professor. Faith requires greater strength than violence. We are nonresisters to violence because we understand faith.” (p. 102)

This is perhaps the biggest difference between the Amish and the English in the story, manifesting itself in everything from their forgiveness of the kidnapper of the children, to their unwillingness to pursue the culprit at all, to their apparent disinterest in determining whether Benny Erb was murdered or not. For the English characters, it is also a frustrating position, one guaranteed to impede a murder investigation.

Gaus has said he focuses on a single aspect of Amish life or particularly Amish way of thinking in each of his novels. What is the key element here?

Gaus has a long-standing interest in the Amish, and he says that his mysteries are written in large part to "illuminate as much of their practices and beliefs as I could." He claims each of his novels focuses on a key feature of Amish life or the Amish character: Blood of the Prodigal is about forgiveness, for example, while Broken English studies pacifism, (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0613/p17s01-bogn.html). Separate from the World seems to fit this pattern too, and the focus of this story is hinted at in the title. In this novel, the Amish (here exemplified in the Erb family) must confront one of the key tenets of their faith, namely that they must remain separate from the world. None of the Amish in the story doubt the community should remain separate, but exactly what is permissible and what threatens that separateness is under dispute.

Enos Erb, Pastor John Hershberger and the other Moderns question whether some science, specifically medicines, would not be appropriate for the Amish community. To summarize one of Enos’s arguments, they wonder if there is really such a difference between (on the one hand) studying the effects of herbs and using them for medicinal purposes, and (on the other) going one step further and studying genes, for example, and using gene therapies discovered through that study (p. 55). In the end, it is Bishop Andy Miller’s argument that wins the day, and the community is reconciled. The Bishop tries to explain this viewpoint to Professor Branden:

“If we try to fix everything to lessen our sufferings, we deny our relationship with God. We deny our dependence.

So, we Amish accept our disabilities. To do otherwise is to rebel against God’s authority. Our lives are supposed to be hard. We do not flee this truth. We trust that nothing can harm us that God has not allowed. Should a short man blame God? Should sorrow diminish our faith? (p. 158)

In the end, the community reaffirms its belief in this reading of God’s will.

What motivates the killer?

The simple answer to this question is self-preservation. Eddie Hunt-Myers faked the research for his senior thesis, and because Professor Lobrelli nominated it for an award, it is going to be scrutinized. He kills Benny Erb and Cathy Billett, kidnaps the Amish children, and then intends to kill Cal Troyer and the Brandens just to cover his tracks.

That isn’t the complete answer, though. Why did he cheat on the thesis in the first place, if, as Professor Nathan Wells tells Branden, Eddie had a great mind (p. 163)? Why would he kill so many people and cause such mayhem just to cover up cheating? He knew he had a strong ally in Arne Laughton, the college president, and he had all the Hunt-Myers family money and influence behind him. There was also a good chance no one would have noticed; after all, Nina Lobrelli actually read the thesis and nominated it for an award, which means some readers might find their views on the Amish vindicated and never question the quality of his research at all. Furthermore, Eddie could simply have stolen the interview notes and other research materials he had submitted to Aidan Newhouse. With that evidence gone, it would have been more difficult to see what Eddie had done. If every cheating college student committed murder to avoid detection, higher education would be a very dangerous proposition, indeed.

The desire to get out of completing a senior thesis, and then to cover up his cheating, isn’t very satisfying as an excuse on its own, so Gaus writes a scene in which Sheriff Bruce Robertson and

Missy Taggert sit down to question Branden and develop a psychological profile of Eddie. They see him as a loner, a quitter who can’t follow through with things, and an overly confident person. They also ask Branden if Eddie seemed to have an unnatural relationship with his mother, which Branden did sense. Ultimately, Bruce thinks he fits one type of killer perfectly:

Bruce said, “He’s got no follow-through, Mike. A short attention span. He’s cruel to people who loved him, like Cathy Billett. He likes his thrills – writing an apology to the Billetts and then asking you to read it. He’s got an outgoing personality, but no real friendships. He had trouble with long-term relationships. He’s a loner, really. And if Missy’s right about those kidnappings, then he’s got no soul. No sense of remorse. He could have done that and never felt a thing. And I’d bet there’s something going on with his mother. That’s the profile of an intelligent sociopath.” (pp. 168-69)

In the final confrontation between Branden and Eddie, the killer conveniently confirms all these suspicions, cackling with glee through the entire discussion. While it may not ring true to all readers, the scene does thoroughly document Eddie’s reasons – in Eddie’s voice, no less, so that the reader isn’t left asking why or having to evaluate whether the sheriff’s profile really fit Eddie (pp. 182-89).

Are you satisfied by the ending?

Whatever we think of Eddie Hunt-Myers and his motivations, his killing spree comes to an abrupt end when Caroline Branden shoots him. Improbably, Eddie removed the duct tape restraining Caroline so she could make coffee, let her out of his sight in the kitchen, and is completely surprised when she reappears with a gun and shoots him (she has also been learning to shoot, we hear [p. 190]).

By this point, we have heard Eddie confess, so there can be no doubt of his guilt, and we cannot doubt that he is mere minutes away from killing Mike Branden, Cal Troyer and Caroline. Caroline has clearly shot a cold-blooded killer in self-defense. In this sense, the ending is appropriate and satisfying. Arne Laughton, the college president, is punished too, as Mike and Caroline at the end of the story are on their way to provide the Billetts with all the information and evidence they need to sue for wrongful death and see to it that Laughton loses his job. With Arne Laughton and Eddie Hunt-Myers punished, there is some measure of justice for Cathy Billett and Eddie’s other victims. For anyone who considers Aidan Newhouse also partly responsible for what happens, he hangs himself, leaving a note for Mike Branden thanking him for forcing him to confront his own lost integrity (pp. 197-98). If death seems too great a punishment for his part in Eddie’s crimes, his suicide note explains his motive more clearly: he can’t bear to face Mike and chooses death over humility. Newhouse is motivated by egotism to the last.

There is closure for the Amish characters as well. Benny Erb may be dead and the Erb children may still be traumatized by their experiences, but there is every reason to believe the community will heal. The Amish are reconciled on the issue of science and medicine, and seem to embrace this new-found certainty in the correct path. Enos Erb seems a different man:

In the dwarf’s expression, Branden could read the timeless suspicion that all back-roads Amish harbor for the modern. He also saw assuredness there – a self-confidence that stemmed from a secure place in the world. A peacefulness that stemmed from faith. This was not the same Enos Erb who had come to his office at the college last Friday morning. (p. 132)

In many ways, the peace the Amish find at the end is far more satisfying than the worldly justice meted out to the English characters.

Many colorful characters get very brief treatment here. Who would you have liked to read more about?

Benny Erb is regularly described as a chatterbox in the story, but we never get to hear him speak a single word. He seems to have been caught in the middle of the dramatic split between his brothers Enos and Israel over the role of science in the community, but we also get a glimpse of a secret life that makes him even more fascinating. We learn that he had a cell phone and did secret interviews with Eddie Hunt-Myers. When Branden and Cal Troyer look for clues in his room, they find mementos of his fascination and contact with the English. They find a collection of nearly a hundred business cards from people of all professions, as well as matchbooks from restaurants, courtesy soaps from motels, political flyers and bumper stickers, neatly stacked box tops, and more: “Under one window, a small set of shelves held free cookbooks from the Holmes County fair, hand tracts from churches and revivals, magazines from doctors’ offices, pamphlets about kites and radio-controlled airplanes, an English-German dictionary, and a stack of old raffle tickets bound together with a red rubber band” (p. 105). Although he is dead from the very start of the story, he seems to have been a very interesting character, and what he left behind after his death raises a lot of questions – questions for which there will never be any answers.

Willa Banks is the English neighbor of the Erbs, who tells Branden what he otherwise couldn’t know about Mattie and Albert Erb meeting to play in secret, and has apparently been talking lots to the students who come out to learn about the Amish. As a gossip, she is an invaluable source of information, and her proximity to the Amish means that she has an insider’s knowledge of what goes on in the Amish community without being a member of the close-lipped society herself. She seems to have strong opinions, and voices them in colorful language, as when she tells Branden what she thinks of Bishop Andy Miller: “They’re all so secretive and all, these Amish, and they think nobody out here can see what’s really going on. And that Miller lost a daughter to Parkinson’s. Because he wouldn’t pay for medicine, the cheap, miserable puke! Pardon my French” (p. 76). It’s surprising that Branden doesn’t spend more time questioning her about Cathy Billett, who conducted research in the Amish community, and about Benny’s secret activities.

A sub-plot that receives only brief treatment in the novel is the revelation that Cal Troyer has a daughter he never knew about. Readers of other books in the series may know more about Cal’s life from previous reading, but a reader of this volume alone is able to piece together what happened: Cal was married, and went off to Vietnam. Meanwhile, his wife, who was pregnant, fell in love with someone else and filed for divorce. She never told Cal about the pregnancy and he never knew why she wanted the divorce (pp. 38-43). When his daughter, Rachel Ramsayer, contacts him nineteen years later, it is the first time Cal understands what happened and hears that he has a daughter. He does not immediately comply with Rachel’s request for a DNA test: from the Friday the letter arrives, he waits until Sunday before swabbing the inside of his cheek (p. 113). Cal spends most of Friday in the garden at the Brandens, off by himself thinking. During the time they spend investigating, Branden sometimes asks him about the letter and what he intends to do, but Cal can’t say. One of the few comments he does make about what is keeping him from wanting to know whether Rachel was truly his daughter or not is, “I can’t get past her mother” (p. 64). Some two weeks after the main action of the story, Rachel Ramsayer arrives at the airport; Cal and the Brandens are waiting to meet her. To Branden’s surprise, Rachel is a dwarf. Cal, however, shrugs and reminds Branden that his grandfather was Amish:

She’s an Ellis-van Creveld dwarf. It’s the genetic syndrome some Amish descendants have. And my grandfather was a descendant of Samuel King, who came to eastern Pennsylvania in the mid-1700s. He’s the start of the genetics. Samuel and his wife. Thing is, Mike, we always knew this was possible. My grandfather came to Ohio from Lancaster, and that’s where the syndrome is most prevalent. (p. 198)

In terms of theme, Rachel’s size fits in perfectly with the story’s emphasis on Amish genetics, but Cal’s feelings – not to mention Rachel’s – seem to be beyond the scope of the novel. Perhaps these two will receive more of the author’s time in later books in the series.

Further Reading:

Fiction:

Carrie Bender, A Winding Path (1994)

Old Order Amish writer Carrie Bender continues the tale she began in A Fruitful Vine. Here Bender explores the ill-fated romance of an Amish woman and an outsider interested in joining the community, as well as the genetic blood disorders that make such an influx of newcomers into the closed community of the Amish particularly desirable.

W. Dale Cramer, Levi’s Will (2005)

Nineteen-year-old William Mullet flees the Amish community where he was raised and enlists in the military, changing his name and entering a new world. This novel follows William, his family, and the Amish over three generations as William seeks to repair the damage and heal the wounds of the past.

Michael Lowenthal, Avoidance: A Novel (2002)

Harvard graduate student Jeremy Stull has lived with the Amish and studies the lives of the shunned in particular. He is also a counselor at a Vermont summer camp, where he is forced to confront his own society’s forms of shunning, in particular its treatment of homosexuality.

Gail Bowen, Burying Ariel: A Joanne Kilbourn Mystery (2000)

Political Science professor Joanne Kilbourn is shocked to learn that a promising young faculty member has been found dead in the library stacks. When it develops that a feminist group is willing to use her death as a political symbol, and that they seem to be targeting a professor who was accused of sexual harassment, Joanne must find out whether Ariel's death is other than it seemed at first without running afoul of the ruthless leader of the faction.

Jodi Picoult, Plain Truth (2000)

Philadelphia attorney Ellie Hathaway retreats to Amish country for reflection and rest, but instead finds herself embroiled in the trial of eighteen-year-old Katie Fisher, who stands accused of having murdered her newborn.

Ted Wojtasik, No Strange Fire (1996)

Author Wojtasik lived among the Amish after a series of barn fires in 1992, an experience he transforms into this mystery about an FBI agent and a local sheriff investigating an Amish barn burning in which the chief suspect is a young Amish man and the community itself would prefer not to pursue the culprit and to leave justice to God instead.

Nonfiction:

Tom Schachtman, Rumspringa: To Be or Not To Be Amish (2006)

Schachtman takes a look at the Amish rite of passage rumspringa (literally “running around”), the time when sixteen-year-old Amish are allowed – and even expected – to experiment with the temptations of the outside world, including drinking, premarital sex and driving cars, before they decide whether or not they will commit to life within the Amish community.

Donald B. Kraybill, Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (2007)

Readers fascinated by the Amish community’s attitude towards crime and punishment in Separate from the World will enjoy this nonfiction look at the same issues. Kraybill looks at the 2006 shooting at an Amish school that killed five children and the community’s decision to forgive the shooter.

This Book Discussion Guide was developed by Janet West Rogers, a writer and editor based in Stevenage, Hertfordshire and a longtime contributor to NoveList and NoveList Plus.