Customer Reviews

Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish

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With finely honed prose as honest and deep as the people portrayed here, the author opens a window into a world we couldn't otherwise experience. I loved learning about the most conservative Amish, but I took even greater pleasure in getting to know this one Amish family. The author is careful in avoiding sterotypes and generalizations. Instead, he paints a world for the reader, using language that allows us to sense and feel the wonder for ourselves. It's by far the best Amish book out there, and the best book of any kind I've read in a long time.

Am so glad the author has written this book, because I have had Amish friends, both old order and modern, since 1990 and have learned so much from them as well as how so many outsiders (English) do indeed either romanticize about the way they live or sadly mock and make fun of them. I have a number of books on plain living that involve Amish, Quaker, Mennonite ways.

And am glad to see this book from someone who is writing about a great friendship with one person and his family. And am so glad to see (unlike other books on the Amish) the author go out of his way to remind the reader that what he is writing about is his personal experience with one small group or member of one sect of the Amish.

It has also allowed me on my quest to live a more simple life to see that less can be more and that much of what modern society says is a must, actually makes for more work. Like carpeting which gets dirtier and is harder to clean than a wood floor that can be swept and damp mopped. Or wallpaper that gets stained over the years and goes out of date, and thus is not a real need.

If nothing else this wonderful book Plain Sects: An Outsider Among The Amish may well educate others about what really matters in life. As well as allow the reader to see that a work ethic that actually involves hard work can be good for the mind body and spirit. People can also learn how a community takes care of its own, and what true forgiveness is.

Something that I think even the author who admits to not fully understanding the rigid rules some Amish have, may miss, especially when it comes to church rules that are enforced even to the point of shunning or excommunication members (which is rare), is that even amongst traditional English religions like Catholicism, and the Baptists etc, excommunication for not following church rules used to be the norm. And for reasons that many outsiders never fully understood.

Its just that unlike the Amish and a few other conservative English sects, the denominations have become more cafeteria or pick and choose what you wish to follow when it comes to denominational rules.

In this window into the day to day life of members of a strict Amish sect, Joe Mackall delivers a clear and reflective portrait of a people living fully in accordance with their beliefs. As Mackall opens and warms to the family he comes to know as intimately as any "English" can expect to know the Amish, we also are drawn into their circle of faith. But he does not exclude us from his doubts about the limitations of such a life. He talks with young people who have fled their Amish upbringing and we feel, with them, the anguish of their choice. In leaving to enter the larger world, they find themselves shunned by family and community, bereft of any support as they try to find work and support themselves with only an eighth grade education and no proof they are even U.S. citizens. For those who stay, the life is a hard one, full of intense peace and also staggering losses. Their families are large, but children often die due to inadequate health care, and also as a result of accidents involving the horse-drawn buggies they drive on dangerous roads. These conflicts of faith and practice abound, and Mackall gives patient regard to every facet of the choices these Amish make as well as the choices he, himself, makes in living life as each believes he should. In addition, the writing is nearly transparent. I'd thought to read a few pages every night before bed, but found myself finishing the book in less than a week, grateful for Mackall's insight.

As someone who grew up Swartzentruber Amish in the same community as the "Shetler" family I consider this to be one of the best books on the Amish I've ever come across. It accurately tells the real story without being offensive. My only problem with reading it was knowing how private the Amish are I felt like I was eavesdroping! If you are looking for an accurate account of life inside the Swartzentruber Amish community this book is a must read.

Neither a scholarly treatise nor a vilification, an idealization nor an exposé, Joe Mackall's PLAIN SECRETS is a narrative that explores one man's relationship to an Amish family and, by extension, a community.

Mackall, who lives in Ashland County, Ohio, befriends the Shetler family: Samuel, Mary and their nine children (names changed by the author). Over the years, living in close proximity to the Shetlers, Mackall develops as close a relationship with the family as an Englisher might be allowed. What emerges is the peace, beauty and goodness of the culture, as well as the disturbing questions he finds himself asking about legalism, the rights of women and the protection of children. His friendship with the family also helps him learn more about himself. "I have chosen...to mine the raw material of their everyday lives in search of everyday truths," writes Mackall.

It's an immersion into the world of the Swartzentruber, the most traditional and strict of the Amish sects. The Swartzentruber refuse to use reflective signs on the back of their buggies, leave school after the eighth grade, bathe only once a week and carry no insurance. The women are not permitted to wear bras and are not allowed to shave their underarms or legs.

However, there are plenty of surprises. This conservative sect shops at Wal-Mart and loves the Dollar Store, and may enjoy junk food such as Milky Way candy bars and potato chips. Although they don't practice "rumspringa" like many other Amish sects, the Swartzentruber Amish let their teens go on "dates," in which a teenage boy and girl spend the night together, side by side, in her bed. Mackall skillfully weaves other information throughout the narrative: the history of the Swartzentruber, the organization of the church and the ordination of ministers, and Amish perceptions of African Americans.

As part of his exploration, Mackall follows the story of Samuel's nephew Jonas, who leaves the Amish to join the English community. The reader will be alternately intrigued, sympathetic and repelled at how Jonas handles his new-found "freedom." To abandon Amish life, Mackall shows through Jonas's attempt, is to encounter immediate problems. How do you get a Social Security number if your parents refuse to let you have a copy of their marriage license? How do you find a job when you've never gone to school past the eighth grade? The Amish community's culture and rules, Mackall realizes, make it difficult for a child to leave.

Living in close proximity to the Shetler family offers Mackall positive insights as well --- an appreciation and attention to the weather, a realization that he doesn't need as much as he perhaps wants. Mackall, a professor of English and journalism at Ashland University, beautifully pens one particularly haunting scene, which finds him rhythmically tossing butternut squash to Samuel in his truck as they get ready to go to an auction.

"Perhaps it's because the weather is fair and the season is autumn, but suddenly I experience a paroxysm of joy --- sheer, sharp unadulterated joy. I'm suspended between two worlds, an outsider in an outsider's world. I'm here with friends who consider themselves separate from the world but woven into the earth, while we all throw fruits of the earth to one another: seeds planted, sown, produce reaped and cleaned, soon to be sold, bought, and eaten. Toddlers play, teenagers laugh, a friend loses his hat, my back aches, and through it all the beauty and heartbreaking brevity of this life pierce me with their stunning certainty."

Other scenes are not so prosaic. After enjoying his rides in Samuel's buggy and telling others about them "as if I were playing a small part in some quaint drama most people could only watch", he must re-evaluate his thinking after another family's buggy is hit by a car and an eight-year-old girl is killed. This leads to a written personal tirade, which ends with, "Is sticking with your sacred buggies more important than the sanctity of human life? Can't you take care of your children?" Readers will have further concerns when Samuel takes his daughter to a veterinarian for medical treatment or, like all Swartzentrubers, refuses to immunize his children. Mackall's questions as he ponders the less appealing side of Amish life are respectful, vulnerable and thought provoking.

Threaded throughout Mackall's book is Samuel's belief in God's will and how it affects his world. "He talks about God's will the way he reports how much it rained the night before or that one of his cows has the milk disease. God's will is like gravity --- it is rain and dirt and sun and snow and wind and fire and every other elemental thing. It is what it is --- no matter what we do." Despite Mackall's own disagreement with Samuel's theology, he finds himself strangely comforted by it when a disabled uncle dies.

It's these conflicting perceptions that provide the necessary tension that holds Mackall's narrative together. Readers will come away with new perspectives about Amish life and some disturbing questions.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby. Contact Cindy at phrelanzer@aol.com.

I was looking forward to this book, but found it to be very superficial and quite repetitive-- each chapter seemed to re-cap the previous one, anecdotes circled around without resolution or commentary. I suppose I was looking for a more analytical or academic text. If you are looking for one person's individual experience with one Amish family, without much analysis or reflection, then this is the book for you. It was not the book for me.

I stumbled upon this book when looking for a book on the Amish after finishing a number of Beverly Lewis books. Being from Ohio, and having graduated from Ashland University, this book was one that explaind a lot of my questions, having seen Amish in the community when I was in college. Joe Mackell is or was a professor at Ashland. (way after I was there!) A very easy read memoir, this book complimented the fiction that I had been reading. I also appreciated learning about Ohio Amish in a contemporary light.

Mackall's Plain Secrets is excellent research and memoir combined. It's also great writing, which makes for great reading. Mackall watches and listens carefully to his Amish friends and neighbors, and then examines their beliefs by dissecting his own beliefs about life, family and religion in our modern day. His research is not intended to be a textbook on the Amish, rather, it adds credibility and insight. Combined with his own large capacity for empathy and concern, his research helped him avoid either condemning or romanticizing their way of life. Having read this, I'll view the buggies that pass me with more respect and less cartoonish curiosity; I'll also be more thankful for my access to health care and safe workplaces. But the real reason to read this book is not to learn about the Amish, it is to enjoy an engaging book while learning about people you would otherwise never meet.

I just love this book! The author writes several times that it's about his personnal relation with one Swartzentruber family (the most conservative group) over more than a decade. Still it opens the window on the life of the community. Also what's great is that it shows the Amish people as they are: people. Amish society is not all white (as some people might idealize it) but it's not all black either.
Though we can be puzzled about some Swartzentruber's ways, as Joe Mackall is, we can learn a big deal from them, too. A lot.

This book is well written... somewhat like a collection of short essays on the author's experiences with his Amish family neighbors. It is very enlightening and dismisses a lot of common misconceptions about the Amish in general and the Swartzentruber Amish in particular. It reads fast and holds your attention throughout. It lives up to the interview with the author that was done by Bob Edwards on XMPR radio.