Plain and Simple: A Journey to the Amish

May Sarton

Just plain wonderful...I haven't read such a nourishing book for a long time.

New York Times Book Review

An account of a quest that leaves [Bender] content and, magically, has the same effect on the reader...In prose that seems to echo the rhythm of Amish life, the author kicks around some old questions with surprising freshness...Listening to her gentle voice consider the questions is charming and, somehow, invigorating.

As simple and vibrant a creation as the Amish quilts that first drew Bender into her journey.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Modern-day career woman and homemaker Bender tells of the compulsion--for Amish dolls and quilts that seemed to evoke a simpler life--that took her from New York State to Iowa and Ohio, where she lived with sympathetic Amish families and began the journey of self-discovery here described. The unvarying rhythm of ``plain'' lives, the importance placed on every day's manual labor and the absence of contemporary distractions such as telephones and microwaves proved revelatory; the one-time Californian was awed by ``an aesthetic leanness, a paring down that I have come to appreciate.'' In her graceful tribute to a community of people who value the ordinary as an end in itself, Bender allows us to sojourn vicariously miles away from the frenzy of contemporary urban life. (Nov.)