Boldly goes where many Amish chronicles fear to tread: the exodus of members seeking an unencumbered lifestyle.
An affecting memoir from a former Old Order Amish member who abandoned his structured family life for autonomy in the free world.
Wagler, the 9th of 11 children, recalls his family settling in the “somewhat progressive” southwestern Canadian township of Aylmer in the 1960s. They enjoyed running water on the farm, unlike other more conservative Amish collectives bound by what Wagler calls the “inordinate fussing” of horse-and-buggy travel, forbidden electric and telephone service, home-sewn dresses for women and beards for men. His farm years are fondly and unhurriedly conveyed in ponderous reflection as Wagler admits to rarely ever being bored growing up (three-hour church services were the only exception). As his teenage years hit, resistance to the rigid Amish rules simmered while the family uprooted themselves to a burgeoning Amish community in Bloomfield, Iowa. There, Wagler experimented with the worldly temptations of the outward “English society” during his traditional adolescent “Rumspringa” period, but, at 17, the itch of independence became a calling he couldn’t deny or resist. Late one night, armed with a duffel bag and $150, he left home. In engrossing, straightforward prose, the author passionately describes the ensuing five years he spent rationalizing his desire to join the outside world while he grappled with the tidal pull back to familial safety and stability. This created an exasperating cycle of secretive departures and humbling homecomings; even an attempt at love was dashed in favor of fleeing once again. The collective shunning by the Amish church proved a double-edged sword for the author; while sorrowful, it finally brought necessary closure to Wagler’s youthful wanderings, yet taught him how to “leave and not be lost.”
Boldly goes where many Amish chronicles fear to tread: the exodus of members seeking an unencumbered lifestyle.Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4143-3936-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tyndale House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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