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Latest 'Tale' book selection stirs soul-wrenching questions
February 5, 2009
Tom Rivers
I finished the latest "A Tale for Three Counties" book over
the weekend and it may take a while to wipe the grime from my mind.
I was intrigued by the book, Separate from the World, mainly because it included Amish people. I seldom see them as literary subjects. Usually I see people gawking at them when they come to town. I saw a father and his son in Tim Hortons in Albion about three months ago. People were staring.
I've met many of the estimated 200 Amish and Mennonite folks who have settled in the Lyndonville area the past decade. I see them often in Albion and even Batavia, putting on roofs and doing other jobs. Us "English" folk admire them for their work ethic and their amazing responsiveness to customers.
The Amish and Mennonite typically have a community phone and they check messages frequently. Other local people drive them to job sites so the crews with straw hats can give estimates and do the work. While some "English" contractors may take months to get around to a job, the Amish and Mennonite crews will show up the next day or two and have a new roof on in sometimes less than a week.
Those of use who live with modern amenities wonder about the Amish community, how they manage without many of our technological conveniences, and how they seem to support each other as a group.
I was expecting some insights into their culture by reading Separate from the World. I learned there is a debate among the Amish over modern medicine and how to help the Amish combat a high rate of genetic defects. Some Amish favor a modern approach and others shun genetic testing.
That's one of the backdrops of the book, and ultimately the issue draws college professors and students into contact with an Amish community in Ohio.
The Amish seem overly caricatured in the book, depicted as blind sheep in their rigid adherence to their beliefs. One of the college students, the villain of the book, finds the community's Christian devotion "quaint" and sees the Amish as easy prey for his corrupt mind. This character, Eddie, is truly an abomination, inflicting unspeakable horrors on his girlfriends and on children.
I would just dismiss it as a story. But the horror of Oct. 2, 2006, is still vivid in my conscience. That day a gunman showed up at an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County and shot five girls, ages 6 to 13, in the back of the head. The shooter wounded five other children before killing himself.
When the media caravan converged on the Amish town, the world was shocked to see the forgiving attitudes and concern for the shooter's family.
In Separate from the World, many of the Amish are willing to forgive when tragedy hits the community. But one Amish man isn't. He seeks "English justice" and asks for help from a college professor.
I don't blame the guy. His brother was murdered.
I called Leslie DeLooze, the Tale coordinator, and told her I didn't like the book, clearly the most unpleasant of the seven books so far in the three-county reading project. But the book wasn't meant to be a happy read, said DeLooze, the community services librarian at Richmond Memorial Library in Batavia.
"It relates to the whole question, 'Is anyone really separate from the world, and all the things in the world that are good and bad?'" she said.
The Tale committee picked the book because of its rural flavor and the impact of a college on a small-town community, she said.
But she knows the good-versus-evil questions and the response in the face of evil will provoke lively discussions at local libraries before author Paul Gaus arrives March 12-14.
Gaus will be leading discussions about the book during his three-day trip out here. I've got a few questions for him.
Tom Rivers is a general assignment reporter who also writes columns,
which are published alternate Thursdays.
Courtesy of Batavia Newspapers Corporation