National Network for Equitable Library Service

Set in a small Mennonite community in Pennsylvania in 1896, this novel depicts the reaction of the "plain people" to various modern encroachments. Publishers Weekly called it, "A beautifully told lesson for the contemporary reader in how any community adapts to a changing world." The story portrays tragedy and crisis in a small Pennsylvania community in 1896 from the point of view of a 15-year-old Mennonite boy experiencing his first encounter with death. In the spring of 1896, Silas Hershey was 15, working hard six days a week alongside his family in their corn and tobacco fields. On Sundays, he gossiped with his cousin Sam, eyeing the girls from a corner of the Paradise Mennonite Church yard, and several evenings a week, he drove his sister Barbie and cousin Biney to "special meetings" at nearby churches. Then came the troubled romances of both Barbie and older brother Hen. But social and political change was flooding the country, and in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the ripples reached the church steps and pulpits. The special evening meetings, which to Silas and Sam were merely social occasions, signaled a radical shift in Mennonite belief and tradition, led by the "Western preachers," as Silas called them. Events reach a climax one summer Saturday night when Barbie and her young man, Enos Barge, are returning from a party and a train hits their buggy at a dangerous crossing. The Western preachers seize upon the incident—neither Barbie nor Enos had yet joined the church, and the revivalists use them as cautionary examples of those who are not "saved." People convert in flocks. And the Hersheys, for whom Barbie was their light and joy, are left stunned by grief, struggling to keep a shattered family from disintegrating. Sara Stambaugh tells the story with both sympathy and candor. She captures remarkably well the point of view, language, and feelings of an adolescent Mennonite boy caught in the whirlpool of a first encounter with death. Her images evoke a time and place so vividly that the reader can almost smell the arbutus and feel the crackle of ice underfoot. Skyhorse Publishing, along with its Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, proudly publishes a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, and literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and more. While not every title becomes a New York Times bestseller, the publisher remains committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.