Customer Reviews

Amish Life Through a Child's Eyes

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This is a darker version of "Little House on the Prairie" in which the author's father suffers a head injury when she is only four years old. He becomes increasingly disoriented and eventually has to be institutionalized. Alma Hershberger's mother is left with eight children to raise on her own.

Alma's Amish family had moved to Iowa during World War II, about a year before her father was injured by a falling horse. When Alma's maternal uncle acquired control of her family's finances, he skimped on every penny, refusing to let his sister buy even the smallest treats for her children such as a watermelon or a box of Jell-o. He finally agreed to let Alma get a new pair of shoes, when it was called to his attention that she was attending church meetings barefoot in the midst of an Iowa winter.

Uncle Judas is definitely the villain of this book and Alma's mother is the heroine. The first year after her husband was hospitalized, "the Amish community helped Mom and the boys farm. After the first year, it began to be old hat and help came more and more seldom." Mom took Alma's oldest brother, William out of fourth grade to help with the farm, and the family continued on its own. The only supplies that Uncle Judas would buy for them from `outside' were flour, sugar, yeast, Karo syrup, baking powder, soda, salt, oatmeal, and cornmeal. Everything else they ate came from their farm.

Alma's recollections of her childhood are a fascinating look backward at what it must have been like for Iowa's nineteenth century pioneers to begin to farm the harsh Midwestern landscape, since the Amish never quite moved into the twentieth century with the rest of us.

Part of Alma's family, including the author herself, left the Amish life when she was fourteen. Although this book doesn't extend that far, I would love to know why Alma left the old faith behind to start a new life.

Alma Hershberger has written a personal story about her families struggle to survive in a Iowan Amish community in the 1950s. Her father was hospitalized after an accident. Her mother and eight siblings struggled against climate, and prejudices. The book reminded me that families and children are the same no matter what they wear or their lifestyles. A wonderful insite into the Amish.

This is a darker version of "Little House on the Prairie" in which the author's father suffers a head injury when she is only four years old. He becomes increasingly disoriented and eventually has to be institutionalized. Alma Hershberger's mother is left with eight children to raise on her own.

Alma's Amish family had moved to Iowa during World War II, about a year before her father was injured by a falling horse. When Alma's maternal uncle acquired control of her family's finances, he skimped on every penny, refusing to let his sister buy even the smallest treats for her children such as a watermelon or a box of Jell-o. He finally agreed to let Alma get a new pair of shoes, when it was called to his attention that she was attending church meetings barefoot in the midst of an Iowa winter.

Uncle Judas is definitely the villain of this book and Alma's mother is the heroine. The first year after her husband was hospitalized, "the Amish community helped Mom and the boys farm. After the first year, it began to be old hat and help came more and more seldom." Mom took Alma's oldest brother, William out of fourth grade to help with the farm, and the family continued on its own. The only supplies that Uncle Judas would buy for them from `outside' were flour, sugar, yeast, Karo syrup, baking powder, soda, salt, oatmeal, and cornmeal. Everything else they ate came from their farm.

Alma's recollections of her childhood are a fascinating look backward at what it must have been like for Iowa's nineteenth century pioneers to begin to farm the harsh Midwestern landscape, since the Amish never quite moved into the twentieth century with the rest of us.

Part of Alma's family, including the author herself, left the Amish life when she was fourteen. Although this book doesn't extend that far, I would love to know why Alma left the old faith behind to start a new life.