The Miting by Dee Yoder

 

Client Dee Yoder's book, The Miting, has released from Kregel Publications, the first in a three book series. She is currently editing her second Novel, The Powerful Odor of Mendacity and is working on the second of her Amish fiction novels, The Way Out. She writes short story fiction for the Faithwriters Writing Challenge and her work has been published in The Evangel, Good Tidings, and The Quill magazines. She is a voluntary writer for Dee's News: The Former Amish Newsletter with Mission to Amish People (MAP Ministry). She is happily married to Arlen, and they have a son, Joseph, who is in college. She is active on the Amish Forum and Discussion board which she helped to create with the founder of Mission to Amish People, Joe Keim.  She has a personal connection to the Amish through her husband’s family, who are from the Holmes County Ohio Amish community and has connections through many ex-Amish who are involved with Mission to Amish People in her hometown area.

Leah is seventeen and Amish. Like many her age, she has lots of questions, but the temporary flight of freedom known as rumspringen is not the answer for her. She does not desire Englisher fashion, all-night parties, movies, or lots of boyfriends. Leah is seeking to understand her relationship with God, to deepen and broaden her faith by joining a Bible study hosted by an ex-Amish couple. She wants to know why Amish life is the only lifestyle her family accepts, why the church has so many rules, and . . . most disturbing, how godly men can allow her best friend to be abused in her own home. In the pressure-cooker environment of church and family, Leah is not allowed to ask these questions. When finally she reaches the breaking point, she walks away from the Old Order Amish life that is all she has known. Though adapting amiably to the Englisher world, Leah is tormented with homesickness. Returning to the community, however, entails a journey of pain and sorrow Leah could never have imagined. The miting—shunning—that will now be Leah’s unendurable oppression every day is beyond her most devoted attempts to believe or understand. All the bishop and her family ask is that she abandon her practice of reading the Bible. Is that a price she is willing to pay?

 

 This is a powerful book, written out of first-hand work with the Mission to Amish People organization. The order link for the book is here.