Download or read book Mennonite Valley Girl written by Carla Funk and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In luminous prose that effortlessly portrays the intimate and familiar pangs of growing up, Funk captivates from the get-go, and the ’80s nostalgia will hit the spot for those who came of age amid skyscraper bangs, acid-washed jeans, and the ubiquity of teen heartthrob Kirk Cameron. These small-town stories are big on charm.” —Publishers Weekly A funny and whip-smart memoir about a feisty young woman’s quest for independence in an isolated Mennonite community. Carla Funk is a teenager with her hands on the church piano keys and her feet edging ever closer to the flames. Coming of age in a remote and forested valley—a place rich in Mennonites, loggers, and dutiful wives who submit to their husbands—she knows her destiny is to marry, have babies, and join the church ladies’ sewing circle. But she feels an increasing urge to push the limits of her religion and the small town that cannot contain her desires for much longer. Teenage (Mennonite) angst at its finest: Carla questions the patriarchal norms of Mennonite society and yearns to break free. She’ll start by lighting her driveway on fire …. A family story: the perfect gift for mothers, daughters, sisters, and fathers and sons. Pitch-perfect 1980s nostalgia: remember Jordache jeans? For readers of Miriam Toews: heart wrenching and humorous descriptions of Mennonite life. At once a coming-of-age story, a contemplation on meaning, morality, and destiny, and a hilarious time capsule of 1980s adolescence, Mennonite Valley Girl offers the best kind of escapist reading for anyone who loves small towns, or who was lucky enough to grow up in one.
Download or read book Blush written by Shirley Hershey Showalter and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I promise: you will be transported,” says Bill Moyers of this memoir. Part Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, part Growing Up Amish, and part Little House on the Prairie, this book evokes a lost time, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, when a sheltered little girl named after Shirley Temple entered a family and church caught up in the midst of the cultural changes of the 1950”s and ‘60’s. With gentle humor and clear-eyed affection the author, who grew up to become a college president, tells the story of her first encounters with the “glittering world” and her desire for “fancy” forbidden things she could see but not touch. The reader enters a plain Mennonite Church building, walks through the meadow, makes sweet and sour feasts in the kitchen and watches the little girl grow up. Along the way, five other children enter the family, one baby sister dies, the family moves to the “home place.” The major decisions, whether to join the church, and whether to leave home and become the first person in her family to attend college, will have the reader rooting for the girl to break a new path. In the tradition of Jill Ker Conway’s The Road to Coorain, this book details the formation of a future leader who does not yet know she’s being prepared to stand up to power and to find her own voice. The book contains many illustrations and resources, including recipes, a map, and an epilogue about why the author is still Mennonite. Topics covered include the death of a child, Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, the role of bishops in the Mennonite church, the paradoxes of plain life (including fancy cars and the practice of growing tobacco). The drama of passing on the family farm and Mennonite romance and courtship, as the author prepares to leave home for college, create the final challenges of the book.
Download or read book Us Little People written by Carl Hiebert and published by Erin, Ont. : Boston Mills Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of photographs documenting the unique daily life of Mennonite children. Includes brief essays by the children telling the stories, in their own words.
Download or read book Mennonite in a Little Black Dress written by Rhoda Janzen and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron comes Janze's hilarious and moving memoir about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisis.
Download or read book Nothing Bad Between Us written by Marlena Fiol and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One woman’s story of survival from an abusive upbringing in a close-knit Mennonite community and her journey to forgiveness and reconciliation. Marlena’s childhood in Paraguay was full of contradictions. Her father was both a heroic doctor treating patients with leprosy, and an abusive parent. Her Mennonite missionary community was both a devoted tribe and a controlling society. And Marlena longed both to be accepted and to escape to somewhere new. Then she was publicly humiliated . . . In Nothing Bad Between Us, follow Marlena as she takes control of her life and learns to be her authentic self, scars and imperfections included. This memoir is a story of brokenness and eventual redemption that taps into our collective yearning for healing and forgiveness. Praise for Nothing Bad Between Us “Riveting and spellbinding . . . A true story of healing, deep reflection, raw emotion, and triumph. Marlena has been able to see through her own pain in order to encourage and help bring healing to others. Highly recommended.” —Misty Griffin, author of Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival “I found enormous inspiration and encouragement in this beautifully written account. This book could have been written only by someone possessed of uncommon love, compassion, and empathy. For anyone who has been broken and is in need of healing, please put Nothing Bad Between Us at the top of your list.” —Larry Dossey, MD, New York Times–bestselling author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters
Download or read book Every Little Scrap and Wonder written by Carla Funk and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an award-winning essayist and acclaimed poet comes this radiant, observant, and warmly funny memoir about childhood, family, and small-town life. Carla Funk grew up in a place of logging trucks and God, pellet guns and parables. Every Sunday, she sat with her mother and brother in the same pew at the Mennonite church while her dad stayed home with his cigarettes and a fridge full of whiskey. In these tender, humorous stories, Funk stitches together the wondrous and the mundane: making snow angels and carrying sacks of potatoes, tossing pig bladders like footballs, and vying for the Christmas pageant spotlight. Part ode to childhood, part love letter to rural life, Every Little Scrap and Wonder offers an original take on the memories, stories, and traditions we all carry within ourselves, whether we planned to or not.
Download or read book Mennonite Daughter written by Marian Longenecker Beaman and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if the Mennonite life young Marian Longenecker chafed against offered the chance for a new beginning? What if her two Lancaster County homes with three generations of family were the perfect launch pad for a brighter future? Readers who long for a simpler life can smell the aroma of saffron-infused potpie in Grandma's kitchen, hear the strains of four-part a capella music at church, and see the miracle of a divine healing. Follow the author in pigtails as a child and later with a prayer cap, bucking a heavy-handed father and challenging church rules. Feel the terror of being locked behind a cellar door. Observe the horror of feeling defenseless before a conclave of bishops, an event propelling her into a different world. Fans of coming-of-age stories will delight in one woman's surprising path toward self-discovery, a self that lets her revel in shiny red shoes.
Download or read book Women Talking written by Miriam Toews and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basis of the Oscar-winning film from writer/director Sarah Polley, starring Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand. INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “This amazing, sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of The Handmaid's Tale.” -Margaret Atwood, on Twitter "Scorching . . . a wry, freewheeling novel of ideas that touches on the nature of evil, questions of free will, collective responsibility, cultural determinism, and, above all, forgiveness." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women-all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in-have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they've ever known or should they dare to escape? Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women's all-female symposium, Toews's masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.
Download or read book Mennonite Community Cookbook written by Mary Emma Showalter and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “grandmother of all Mennonite cookbooks” brings a touch of Mennonite culture and hospitality to any home that relishes great cooking. Mary Emma Showalter compiled favorite recipes from hundreds of Mennonite women across the United States and Canada noted for their excellent cooking into this book of more than 1,100 recipes. These tantalizing dishes came to this country directly from Dutch, German, Swiss, and Russian kitchens. Old-fashioned cooking and traditional Mennonite values are woven throughout. Original directions like “a dab of cinnamon” or “ten blubs of molasses” have been standardized to help you get the same wonderful individuality and flavor. Showalter introduces each chapter with her own nostalgic recollection of cookery in grandma’s day—the pie shelf in the springhouse, outdoor bake ovens, the summer kitchen. First published in 1950, Mennonite Community Cookbook has become a treasured part of many family kitchens. Parents who received the cookbook when they were first married make sure to purchase it for their own sons and daughters when they wed. This 65th anniversary edition adds all new color photography and a brief history while retaining all of the original recipes and traditional Fraktur drawings. Check out the cookbook blog at mennonitecommunitycookbook.com
Download or read book Anything But Simple written by Lucinda J. Miller and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like her grandmother, Lucinda J. Miller wears long dresses and a prayer covering. But she uses a cellphone and posts status updates on Facebook, too. Anything but Simple is the riveting memoir of a young woman’s rich church tradition, lively family life, and longings for a meaningful future within her Mennonite faith. With a roving curiosity and a sometimes saucy tongue, Miller ushers us into her busy life as a young schoolteacher. Book 5 in the Plainspoken series. Hear straight from Amish and Mennonite people themselves as they write about their daily lives and deeply rooted faith in the Plainspoken series from Herald Press. Each book includes “A Day in the Life of the Author” and the author’s answers to FAQs about the Amish and Mennonites.
Download or read book Paradise Valley The Daughters of Caleb Bender Book 1 written by Dale Cramer and published by Bethany House. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Amish settlement in Ohio has run afoul of a law requiring their children to attend public school. Caleb Bender and his neighbors are arrested for neglect, with the state ordering the children be placed in an institution. Among them are Caleb's teenage daughter, Rachel, and the boy she has her eye on, Jake Weaver. Romance blooms between the two when Rachel helps Jake escape the children's home. Searching for a place to relocate his family where no such laws apply, Caleb learns there's inexpensive land for sale in Mexico, a place called Paradise Valley. Despite rumors of instability in the wake of the Mexican revolution, the Amish community decides this is their answer. And since it was Caleb's idea, he and his family will be the pioneers. They will send for the others once he's established a foothold and assessed the situation. Caleb's daughters are thrown into turmoil. Rachel doesn't want to leave Jake. Her sister, Emma, who has been courting Levi Mullet, fears her dreams of marriage will be dashed. Miriam has never had a beau and is acutely aware there will be no prospects in Mexico. Once there, they meet Domingo, a young man and guide who takes a liking to Miriam, something her father would never approve. While Paradise Valley is everything they'd hoped it would be, it isn't long before the bandits start giving them trouble, threatening to upset the fledgling Amish settlement, even putting their lives in danger. Thankfully no one has been harmed so far, anyway.
Download or read book Mennonite Girl at the Welcome Inn written by Mary Ediger and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2015-07-23 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to the Welcome Inn and welcome to the life of Mary Ediger. A work of creative non-fiction, Mennonite Girl follows Mary from her life as a young girl in a quiet rural parsonage to an inner city community center in Hamilton, Ontario. The daughter of a Mennonite preacher, Mary struggles with the trials of growing up Mennonite in a non-Mennonite community, while her parents continue to follow God's call. Young and old, religious and non-religious readers alike will find themselves drawn into Mary's tale, laughing all the while as she deals with everything life throws at her. With interminable wit and an everlasting sense of humour, this is a coming of age story for the child in all of us.
Download or read book Katarina written by Eleanor Gail Chornoboy and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mennonite Family History written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bonnet Strings written by Saloma Miller Furlong and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At age twenty, Saloma Miller left behind her Amish community in Burton, Ohio, and boarded a night train for Vermont, where she knew no one. In this poignant coming-of-age memoir, Saloma’s new life of freedom includes work as a waitress and plans to continue her education. Romance also blossoms with a Yankee toymaker. Soon, however, a vanload of people from her community, including the Amish bishop, arrive to take her back into the fold. Saloma’s freedom comes to an abrupt end when she goes back home to Ohio with them. Thus begins a years-long struggle of feeling torn between two worlds: will she remain Amish and embrace the sense of belonging and community her Amish life offers, or will she return to the newfound freedom she tasted in Vermont? Saloma settles into teaching in an Amish school and does her best to fit back into Amish ways, but a legacy of childhood abuse, struggles with an eating disorder, and questions of identity plague her. Her ties to the outside world remain, mostly through the quiet perseverance of the toymaker from Vermont. He keeps sending her cards, never giving up hope that their love could survive the strain of living in two different worlds. Bonnet Strings by Saloma Miller Furlong offers a universal story of overcoming adversity and a rare look inside an Amish community. Readers of Amish fiction and viewers of the PBS documentaries such as The Amish and The Amish: Shunned will find in it a true story: of woundedness and healing, of doubt and faith, and of the often competing desires for freedom and belonging.
Download or read book Curry Corduroy and the Call written by Gwendolyn Hiebert Schroth and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When I read Tom Sawyer as a child, I enjoyed it because of the adventure. When I read it again as an adult, I marveled at how Twain revealed the uncanny ability of a child to relegate major events to a proper level of importance in their world. Gwendolyn Schroth has captured that same magic in her tales. The daughter of missionaries to India, she has told her story in a masterful way. I caught myself alternately laughing out loud and holding back tears at her use of humorous anecdotes to communicate her hopes and fears plus her inability to understand why so much sacrifice was required of a little girl. Avon Acker, Author of Vigilante Caretaker, and Rom and the Promised Land. This story delights. Like other Christian missionaries in the early decades of the 20th century heading toward unevangelized peoples in India, the authors parents encounter things bizarre and wonderful. This story is written from the underside of that effort. It chronicles details noticed by a six-year old and lets readers get inside the conscience of a teenager. Here may be seen both the strengths and foibles of Mennonites. The story is told with a sometimes caustic, sometimes impish undertow. Matters of trivia are interwoven with global events of large proportionHitler, Gandhi. Elmer A. Martens, President Emeritus, Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, Fresno, California The universal appeal of this booka childhood encompassing the two cultures of India and the United States, an alien with a double identitylies not only in the light it casts on the work of foreign missions but also in the enrichment of international understanding. With humor, irony and humanity, Gwen tells her story of what it was like to be at home in a strange land and a stranger at home. Her narrative is delicate, brutal, and hilarious and is a moving exemplar of the value of ?Çÿpucca in the genre of missionarys children literature. Margaret Adelman Smith, Kodaikanal School Alumna This book portrays the wonderful possibilities and powerful reality of missionaries call to service. This warm and rich narrative explores this passion for mission and service to God through the education, faithfulness, and sacrifice of this missionary family. Readers are challenged to consider the direction of their own lives and the powerfulness of true dedication and service. William W. Eason, Pastor, First United Methodist Church of Celeste, Texas
