What’s Happening to Your Family Stories?

So many fun projects approaching publication. This is an excerpt from the family history book I’m writing, My Amish Roots, which should be widely available in about three to four weeks. It’s a series of stories and reflections having to do with my ancestors, going back to the 1500s, and I also talk about what it’s like to be the first in ten generations of my family to move away from Lancaster County and to not grow up Amish:

I began hearing stories, just whispers at first, but then louder.  Stories about my great-grandparents, my great-great grandparents.  Fascinating stories of chance or fate or God, without which I literally would not exist.  The early deaths of spouses that led to my great-great grandparents marrying.  The survival of children, who became my ancestors, in an age when 20% of children died before they reached the age of ten.

The more I dug, the more interesting it became.  And stranger yet, I started seeing pieces of my own story in these men and women whose long-ago lives led to mine: the women’s love for family and this community in particular; the men’s passion for stories and their relationship with the physical landscape of Lancaster.

I began to wonder if, at the end of this journey into history, I might find a key that would unlock a particular part of myself, a part that would otherwise remain hidden, forever.

Stay tuned for more details. As an aside, if you’d like to do review of this book on your blog, or allow me to write a guest post, let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.

8 Replies to “What’s Happening to Your Family Stories?”

  1. I find family histories absolutely mesmerizing. Yours sounds like it’s got the makings of a juicy (okay, in Amish terms) miniseries. I want to read it and review it and read it some more, because your writing is fantastico!

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