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Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish, by Joe Mackall
Download Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish, by Joe Mackall
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Joe Mackall has lived surrounded by the Swartzentruber Amish community of Ashland County, Ohio, for over sixteen years. They are the most traditional and insular of all the Amish sects: the Swartzentrubers live without gas, electricity, or indoor plumbing; without lights on their buggies or cushioned chairs in their homes; and without rumspringa, the recently popularized "running-around time" that some Amish sects allow their sixteen-year-olds.
Over the years, Mackall has developed a steady relationship with the Shetler family (Samuel and Mary, their nine children, and their extended family). Plain Secrets tells the Shetlers' story over these years, using their lives to paint a portrait of Swartzentruber Amish life and mores. During this time, Samuel's nephew Jonas finally rejects the strictures of the Amish way of life for good, after two failed attempts to leave, and his bright young daughter reaches the end of school for Amish children: the eighth grade. But Plain Secrets is also the story of the unusual friendship between Samuel and Joe. Samuel is quietly bemused—and, one suspects, secretly delighted—at Joe's ignorance of crops and planting, carpentry and cattle. He knows Joe is planning to write a book about the family, and yet he allows him a glimpse of the tensions inside this intensely private community.
These and other stories from the life of the family reveal the larger questions posed by the Amish way of life. If the continued existence of the Amish in the midst of modern society asks us to consider the appeal of traditional, highly restrictive, and gendered religious communities, it also asks how we romanticize or condemn these communities—and why. Mackall's attempt to parse these questions—to write as honestly as possible about what he has seen of Amish life—tests his relationship with Samuel and reveals the limits of a friendship between "English" and Amish.
- Sales Rank: #215755 in Books
- Published on: 2008-06-01
- Released on: 2008-06-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .70" w x 5.49" l, .70 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 248 pages
From Publishers Weekly
In an engaging personal memoir, Mackall, an Ohio-based writer and professor of English, describes the close-knit relationship he has cultivated over more than a decade with a neighboring Amish family. This is neither an exposé nor an outsider's fanciful romanticization of the Amish. By focusing on the loves and losses of one large Amish clan, Mackall breathes life into a complex group often idealized or caricatured. He refers, for example, not to "the Amish" writ large, but instead to "the Swartzentruber Amish I know," describing in some detail the tremendous differences between the Swartzentrubers, by far the most traditional sect, and the Old Order, New Order, Beachy and other Amish groups. The Swartzentrubers not only eschew electricity but also padded or upholstered chairs, souped-up buggies, indoor plumbing, the tradition of rumspringa (a running-around period for some Amish teens) and—perhaps most important for this narrative—contact with "the English." Mackall's is the first book to venture behind-the-scenes of this most conservative Amish group. At times Mackall is critical of the Swartzentruber way of life (such as when an eight-year-old girl dies in a buggy accident because the sect rejects safety measures for buggies), but it is a deeply respectful account that never veers toward sensationalism. (June)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* As this wonderful and enlightening book makes clear, the Amish are hardly a monolithic group. Actually, there are many different orders of Amish. The decidedly non-Amish Mackall has lived among the Swartzentruber Amish of Ashland County, Ohio, for more than 16 years. The Swartzentruber are considered the most conservative Amish, eschewing gas, electricity, and indoor plumbing. Even their ubiquitous buggies are driven without lights. Over the years, Mackall developed a friendship with the Shetler family, and Plain Secrets is an affectionate portrait of a family as well as a way of life. Some stereotype and romanticize the Amish, saying they represent an ideal, preindustrial American community. Others sensationalize them as backward religious fanatics. Mackall knows the Shetlers as persons, not cardboard figures, and he has readers get to know them as persons, too. His is hardly black-and-white portraiture. The Amish he writes about are as complex and flawed as any non-Amish. Although he admires their connection to the land and devotion to family, he is conflicted about the future of Amish girls, who live under a resolutely patriarchal household regime, in particular. This is a loving portrait, warts and all, of an often-misunderstood people. Sawyers, June
Review
Prose as graceful as it is unsentimental . . . Mackall doesn't sensationalize, romanticize, or condescend. —Brigid Brett, Los Angeles Times
"Mackall does the job beautifully, painting an intimate portrait of the family that leaves the reader feeling humbled by the common thread that's woven into all of us." —Sarah English, Cleveland Magazine
"Wonderful and enlightening . . . a loving portrait, warts and all, of an often misunderstood people."—Booklist, starred review
"An engaging personal memoir . . . neither an exposé nor an outsider's fanciful romanticization of the Amish. By focusing on the loves and losses of one large Amish clan, Mackall breathes life into a complex group often idealized or caricatured."—Publishers Weekly
"In simple but elegant prose that matches the values of his subject, Joe Mackall takes us deep into the Amish community. He neither romanticizes nor condemns an alternate way of living, but provides stunning insight through the generosity and compassion of his own heart."—Chris Offutt, author of The Same River Twice and Kentucky Straight
"Joe Mackall's Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish meets the biggest challenge of a book such as this by living up to his subtitle: Mackall is both outside and among in equal measure, and it's the most difficult terrain to occupy. Plain Secrets vibrates in that in-betweenness, in ways that only songs or poems usually can, and it does so in prose that's as clear as water. It’s built the way the Amish build their barns—everything here is plumb and level." —Diana Hume George, author of The Lonely Other: A Woman Watching America
"Joe Mackall's patience, empathy, and dogged curiosity illuminate this fine, fascinating study of an elusive culture. Plain Secrets is a provocative, humbling, and soulful book."—Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln’s Melancholy
"Plain Secrets is a moving exploration of a little-known world and friendship across a cultural divide."—Boston GlobeOff the Shelf column
"Mackall explores this paradox with rare honesty and insight . . . Another strength of the book is that while maintaining a personal narrative voice, Mackall folds in a succinct and engaging history of the Anabaptist religious tradition and the polity of the Amish church. This added context greatly enhances the more personal stories."—Boston Globe
"Mackall's writing is an honest and refreshing change from the customary saccharin scribbling about the Noble Amish Man. Despite, or perhaps because of, Mackall's refusal to perch the Amish on a pedestal, he manages to convey a deep respect for the people."—Lancaster New Era
"Mackall describes the details of family, farming and church life with sympathy, accuracy and good will… His particularistic description of one family is a welcome addition to what had often been a sociological literature." —Christian Century
". . . he writes with a forthright precision."—Akron Beacon Journal
"The book points to a difficult truth: A religious community is bound to be freed. Mackall explores this paradox with rare honesty and insight . . . [and] achieves what he promises."—Tom Montgomery-Fate, Boston Globe
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent account of a relationship
By C. M. Hastings
I very much enjoyed reading this book, and I would recommend it to people who are curious about the day-to-day life of perhaps the most reticent group of Amish in the United States.
I wouldn't recommend the book to people who are motivated by the "secrets" in the title. It's true that the Schwartzentruber (how it's spelled out my way) Amish are harder for the English to get to know than, say, Lancaster County Old Order Amish, but that doesn't make them secretive, nor does the author spill secrets in a hushed tone.
Instead, the book offers a well-written, thoughtful memoir of a friendship between an Amish man and an English man. The structure and pacing are excellent, and I find Mackall's observations to be spot-on. These are portraits of an extended family, not generalizations about all Schwartzentrubers or all Amish or even all farmers.
In fact, I wish that the author had continued in that vein, omitting most of the drama associated with the tale of a young man who chose to leave the church. The book was lovely and fascinating without the subplot. I would disagree with Tolstoy's pronouncement that all happy families are happy in the same way--in other words, boring. The book would have been just fine if the meaning of the friendship between the men, and between their wives, were the entire content.
And now, my beef. The author allows himself two rants--one about the question of the happiness of Amish women, who take a subordinate role, and one about the safety of Amish children. I feel that he stepped out of the relationship in the book to address the reader directly in words he would never use to his friends. In film, we would say that Mackall broke the third wall when he vented his frustration to the readers instead of to his friends. It felt like a violation of the friendship as I read it, and it doubly felt as though Mackall didn't "get" the core of the culture. It's about the faith--the faith that God doesn't make mistakes, the faith that His ways are not our ways, the faith that we are not here to stay.
So this is a very good book, a groundbreaking description of one district of Schwartzentrubers. The subtitle is a much better descriptor than the title, and there are some pages I could have lived without. Even with my reservations, I don't regret the purchase, and I would recommend it to my English friends. I would also read other works by Joe Mackall, because he's an excellent storyteller and painter-with-words.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Great book
By Emma in Quebec
I just love this book! The author writes several times that it's about his personnal relation with one Swartzentruber family (the most conservative group) over more than a decade. Still it opens the window on the life of the community. Also what's great is that it shows the Amish people as they are: people. Amish society is not all white (as some people might idealize it) but it's not all black either.
Though we can be puzzled about some Swartzentruber's ways, as Joe Mackall is, we can learn a big deal from them, too. A lot.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Engaging, intelligent look at the Amish life
By Vi
Mackall's Plain Secrets is excellent research and memoir combined. It's also great writing, which makes for great reading. Mackall watches and listens carefully to his Amish friends and neighbors, and then examines their beliefs by dissecting his own beliefs about life, family and religion in our modern day. His research is not intended to be a textbook on the Amish, rather, it adds credibility and insight. Combined with his own large capacity for empathy and concern, his research helped him avoid either condemning or romanticizing their way of life. Having read this, I'll view the buggies that pass me with more respect and less cartoonish curiosity; I'll also be more thankful for my access to health care and safe workplaces. But the real reason to read this book is not to learn about the Amish, it is to enjoy an engaging book while learning about people you would otherwise never meet.
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