Blood of the Prodigal: An Ohio Amish Mystery

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Set authentically among the Old Order Amish of Holmes County, Ohio - home to the largest Amish and Mennonite settlements in the world - Blood of the Prodigal offers readers a growing understanding of Amish ways. For Jonah Miller, shunned by his Old Order sect and cast into the wider world, the summer begins with his decision to kidnap his ten-year-old son from the home of the bishop who had exiled Miller a decade earlier. In his desperation to retrieve the boy, the bishop appeals for help to the only "English" men the sect would ever approve. Professor Michael Branden and Pastor Caleb Troyer had been looking forward to the kind of sleepy rural summer they had enjoyed as boyhood friends growing up in the small college town of Millersburg. Instead, they plunge into the normally closed Amish culture to find the boy. Working sometimes at cross purposes with his friend Sheriff Bruce Robertson, Professor Branden digs through the past to uncover truths that many would prefer to leave undisturbed. Little does he suspect that even the anguished bishop, torn by an insoluble moral dilemma, tragically does not tell everything he knows about the case.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In the Old Order Amish communities of Ohio's Holmes County, it is rare for one of the self-styled "plain" people to seek aid from an outsider, one of "the English." But Bishop Eli Miller needs help and goes for it to a local academic, Michael Brandon. Years before, Miller had exiled his son Jonah for his wild ways. Now Jonah has snatched his own son, Jeremiah, who has been living with the bishop. In a note to his father, Jonah sends assurances that the boy will be returned by harvest time. Concern about Jeremiah's exposure to the outside world prompts the bishop to ask Brandon to locate the boy. And Brandon, too, is worried: Jeff Hostettler--whose sister, Jeremiah's mother, committed suicide--has vowed to kill Jonah on sight. When Jonah is discovered shot dead, dressed in traditional Amish garb and apparently on his way back in repentance to the bishop's home, Hostettler becomes the prime suspect. But where is Jeremiah? Gaus brings a refreshing authenticity to his unusual setting and characters. There are no wisecracking gumshoes here, but instead believable characters whose faith is explored with respect. Anyone who enjoyed the film Witness should take to this fine mystery debut. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

YA-With an unusual setting and a quiet tone, this mystery carries readers into the world of the Ohio Amish, where a bishop's grandson, Jeremiah, has disappeared. The boy had been living with the bishop and his family since his father was banished from the community 10 years earlier, just before Jeremiah's illegitimate birth to a local drug-addicted teenager. The bishop calls upon a local "English" (non-Amish) college professor to locate the boy, as he has reason to believe that Jeremiah is with his missing father for the summer. Eventually Jeremiah's father is found, shot to death, not far from the bishop's farm, but Jeremiah himself has not turned up. Thus the matter becomes public and involves the sheriff and his deputy, who work with the professor to solve the murder and find the boy. This thoughtful book contrasts the Old Order Amish way of life with that of modern America, and provides a refreshing look at a cast of small-town people who do their jobs capably as a matter of course and make their own moral choices.-Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Members of Ohio's Amish community are slow to trust the outsiders they call the English, so it's quite a surprise when Old Order Bishop Eli Miller approaches Professor Michael Branden, a Millersburg College historian, to ask his help in finding his missing grandson Jeremiah. The boy's been taken, the bishop says, by Jeremiah's his father Jonah, the son Eli Miller had cast out of the community ten years ago after he got Brenda Hostettler, a local non-Amish woman, pregnant with Jeremiah, who was born shortly before his mother killed herself. Determined now to keep Branden's investigation under his control, the bishop asks him to find Jonah and Jeremiah without alerting the authorities￯﾿ﾽor anyone else—that the boy is being held against his will and without attempting to bring Jeremiah home by force. It's a troubling list of restrictions, and the situation becomes even more touchy when the body of Jonah, dressed in the Amish garb he hadn't worn for ten years, is found alongside the road a mile from his father's house. Who shot Jonah to death, and what's become of the son he wanted to see a little of the world? The puzzle, turning on a single clue, is negligible, and the pace very, very slow. The charm of Gaus's first novel lies in its gently penetrating portrait of conflicts within the deceptively quiet contemporary Amish community.