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 Mennonite Valley Girl written by Carla Funk and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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 The Amish Nanny written by Mindy Starns Clark and published by Harvest House Publishers. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author Mindy Starns Clark and coauthor Leslie Gould offer readers The Amish Nanny, Book 2 in the Women of Lancaster County series, which tells the stories of young Plain women as they explore their roots, connect with family, and discover true love. Amish-raised Ada Rupp knows it’s time to make a commitment to the faith and join the church, especially if she wants a future with the handsome Amish widower Will Gundy. But when she has the chance to travel to Switzerland as the caregiver of a young child, she leaps at the opportunity. Anxious to learn more about her forebears, Ada enlists the help of a young Mennonite scholar named Daniel, but even as she develops feelings for him, she cannot get Will from her mind—or her heart. At a crossroads, Ada must decide what she is willing to give up from the past in order to embrace her future.
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 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 The Girl in a Coma written by John Moss and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Allison Briscoe is your average fifteen-year-old-until someone tries to kill her. Shot in the head, her doctors and family think she is in a coma, but in fact, though she cannot move, she can think, she can hear, and she can dream. Each night, Allison lives vicariously through her pioneer ancestors, experiencing their adventures through their eyes. First, she enters the world of Rebecca Haun, a fifteen-year-old rebel who lived in Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War. To prove a friend innocent of murder, Rebecca betrays her Mennonite beliefs and joins the Women's Brigade with George Washington's rag-tag army at Valley Forge. And each day, Allison struggles to find a way to show her family that she is awake—a goal that becomes increasingly desperate when she realizes that whoever shot her has come back to finish the job.
Download or read book The Amish Seamstress written by Mindy Starns Clark and published by Harvest House Publishers. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling authors Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould provide an unexpected surprise in The Amish Seamstress, Book 4 in the Women of Lancaster County series, which tells the stories of young Amish women as they explore their roots, connect with family, and discover true love. Izzy Mueller is an exceptional listener and gifted caregiver. She’s also a talented seamstress. As the young woman sits with her elderly patients, she quietly sews as they share their stories. She’s content with her life until circumstances reconnect her with someone she once loved. Zed Bayer, a Mennonite, is not what her family is hoping for in a spouse, and his creative interest in filmmaking is definitely at odds with her Amish upbringing. As Izzy is swept up again in Zed and renews her friendship with his sister, Ella, she begins to ask questions about her own life—her creative longings and historical interests, her relationships and desire for romance, and most importantly, her faith. What is the path God has for her? Can she learn from the past of both her family’s and Zed’s—or must she forge a completely different future of her own?
Download or read book Apologetic written by Carla Funk and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capturing microscopic moments in time and nature, Carla Funk’s poems bring the world to a momentary standstill. Funk translates vivid description and feeling into her poems, both testing and playing with traditional poetic form. Her writing reflects the natural world and tells the story of life’s experiences. Apologetic’s poems experiment with expressing thoughts and emotions in formal poetic traditions, confining words to metrical lines or rhyme schemes. Many deal with the natural world, moments in time spent outdoors, in gardens, and capturing fleeting impressions in the human experience. Playing with form and content, Funk evokes the idea of a flesh-and-bones body (the poetic structure) carrying a spiritual entity (the poem’s meaning). “Highway 16 Sonnet” uses the traditional sonnet form to capture a gruesome snapshot of roadkill as a harsh reality of travel on a Canadian highway. “Ring Around the Moon” describes in 5 verses of four lines each, the experience of taking out the garbage late at night and observing the beautiful night sky, something hallowed above the stench of waste.
Download or read book Runaway Girl written by Carissa Phelps and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Riveting . . . A genuinely important book that casts the problem of sex trafficking in America into stunning, heartbreaking relief.” (Kirkus Reviews) A School Library Journal Best Adult Book for Teens A Joan F. Kaywell Award Finalist from the Florida Council of Teachers of English Carissa Phelps was a runner. By the time she was twelve, she had run away from home, dropped out of school, and fled blindly into the arms of a brutal pimp. Even when she escaped him, she could not outrun the crushing inner pain of abuse, neglect, and abandonment. With little to hope for, she expected to end up in prison, or worse. But then her life was transformed through the unexpected kindness of a teacher and a counselor. Through small miracles, Carissa accomplished the unimaginable, graduating from UCLA with both a law degree and an MBA. She left the streets behind, yet found herself back, this time working to help homeless and at-risk youth discover their own paths to a better life. Like the multimillion-copy bestseller The Glass Castle, this memoir moves us through the power of its unflinching candor and generosity.
Download or read book Sarah s Gift written by Marta Perry and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Amish midwife hopes to earn her community's trust and bring the joy of new life to Pleasant Valley in the third novel in this heartfelt series. After years in a disappointing childless marriage, and now widowed at only twenty-six, Amish midwife Sarah Mast moves to Pleasant Valley for a fresh start. But unpleasant surprises beset Sarah when she joins her aging aunt’s dwindling midwife practice. Signs of her aunt’s decline suggest that she may no longer be capable of the rigorous demands of her work. With Sarah’s last dollar now invested in the birthing center, can she help her aunt face the truth and run the center alone? Aaron Miller, Sarah’s neighbor, counts himself among the skeptics until he witnesses the dedication and love she has for her patients. But when an English doctor files a complaint against Sarah, Aaron’s misgivings resurface—just as his own sister faces a birthing crisis. In the midst of such tribulations, Sarah prays for the strength to defend her practice, care for her patients, and win the hearts of the community she has grown to love.
Download or read book The Mindful Grandparent written by Shirley Showalter and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2022 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grandparenting is a sacred, challenging, and sometimes bewildering calling. As educators, writers, and grandmothers with twelve grandchildren between them, Marilyn McEntyre and Shirley Showalter team up to share practices, tips, and ideas for grandparenting with intention and grace.
Download or read book Native Species written by Todd Davis and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his sixth book of poetry, Todd Davis, who Harvard Review declares is “unflinchingly candid and enduringly compassionate,” confesses that “it’s hard to hide my love for the pleasures of the earth.” In poems both achingly real and stunningly new, he ushers the reader into a consideration of the green world and our uncertain place in it. As he writes in “Dead Letter to James Wright,” “You said / you’d wasted your life. / I’m still not sure / what species I am.” To that end, Native Species explores what happens to us—to all of us, bear, deer, mink, trout, moose, girl, boy, woman, man—when we die, and what happens to the soul as it faces extinction—if it “migrates into the lives of other creatures, becomes a fox or frog, an ant in a colony serving a queen, a red salamander entering a pond before it freezes.” He wonders, too, “How many new beginnings are we granted?” It’s a beautiful question, and it freights, simultaneously, possibility and pain. These are the verses of a poet maturing into a new level of thinking, full of tenderness and love for the home that carries us all.
Download or read book More with Less Cookbook written by Doris Longacre and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2003-09-26 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a new edition of Herald Press's all-time best-selling cookbook, helping thousands of families establish a climate of joy and concern for others at mealtime. The late author's introductory chapters have been edited and revised for today's cooks. Statistics and nutritional information have been updated to reflect current American and Canadian eating habits, health issues, and diet guidelines. The new U.S. food chart "My Plate" was slipped in at the last minute and placed alongside Canada's Food Guide. But the message has changed little from the one that Doris Janzen Longacre promoted in 1976, when the first edition of this cookbook was released. In many ways she was ahead of her time in advocating for people to eat more whole grains and more vegetables and fruits, with less meat, saturated fat, and sugars. This book is part of the World Community Cookbook series that is published in cooperation with Mennonite Central Committee, a worldwide ministry of relief, development, and peace. "Mennonites are widely recognized as good cooks. But Mennonites are also a people who care about the world’s hungry."—Doris Janzen Longacre
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 The Weight of Sand written by Edith Blais and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radiant, unforgettable memoir of one woman’s 450 days spent in captivity, and her defiant refusal to have her humanity stripped away. When Edith meets Luca in a small Northern town, the two connect instantly. Under the Northern Lights, they develop a deep friendship over their shared passions: travel, living off the land, a bohemian life. In search of wanderlust, they embark on an epic road trip from Italy to Togo, where they will join their friend’s sustainable farming project. Upon arriving on the African continent, they change their itinerary and drive through Africa’s Sahel region, a haven for militant groups, where they are surrounded and captured. Little was known about Edith’s and Luca’s fate until they reappeared in Mali more than one year later, having mysteriously escaped their captors. Now, Edith shares her harrowing story with the world for the first time—complete with the poems that became a lifeline for her in captivity, which she wrote in secret with a pen borrowed from another hostage. Against the stunning but cruel backdrop of the desert, Edith recounts her months as a hostage: the oppressive heat, violent sandstorms, constant relocations, hunger strikes, and her eventual heart-pounding escape. Separated from Luca early on, she finds solidarity and comfort with a group of other female hostages, who lend her a pen to write poetry, a creative outlet that helps save her life. Edith is steadfast in her will to remain sane: she reveals her dedication to her art, and her striking ability to unsettle her captors and identify their vulnerabilities. A compelling descent into a strange, brutal universe, The Weight of Sand is ultimately a life-affirming book and a poetic celebration of one woman’s resilience.
Download or read book Beyond Hope s Valley written by Tricia Goyer and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2012 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young Amish woman, searching for truth and love amidst tradition, returns to her home state of Indiana after a season in Montana, hoping to understand where exactly her heart belongs.
Download or read book Down Clearbrook Road written by Anne Konrad and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2019-03-18 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Alberta, a young Mennonite girl arrives in BC, a"promised land of fruit and relatives. The fruit, it turns out, needs pickers and relatives want kids to work. Even her imagined fabulous "States" is across a border. Her parents buy a farm on Clearbrook Road and she's in a village where everyone attends church and knows things. Pastures with huge stumps turn into berry patches and farmyards grow chicken barns. There's a Fraser River flood, a death in her school. She makes new friends at the MEI high school. She keeps a five year journal, champions justice and rebels against female/male stereotypes. She discovers roller skating, group dating and the secular world. For the Mennonite village it is a time of creeping modernity where kids explore choices and parens are consumed with relief work with post WWII refugees arriving from Europe. Her parents were refugees from Soviet Russia. The many photographs in the book, taken by amateurs with inexpensive cameras (mostly from family albums) reflect the late 1940s and early 1950s where teenage views and the community too were often still emerging.
