Born Amish

Ruth Irene Garrett fell in love with an Englischer at the age of 21 and left her Amish community to begin her new life out in the world. Deborah Morse-Kahn has been writing about this very special religious community in the United States. In Born Amish we learn aboutlife as a child growing up in the Amish farming community of Kalona, Iowa: school, games and chores; work, crafts and foods; clothing, farming and tumbling about with many brothers and sisters. We learn about the expectations for girls and boys, and then for young women and young men, in Amish families; of social roles and understandings about courtship and marriage; about adult baptism and the often wrenching decisions young Amish men and women must make to go out into the English world into mainstream Christian congregations, or to stay and make a life of faith in the Amish church.