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2008-10-21 issue:

Three Mennonite books make the news

Facts questioned; balloon rides; 6,500 sold

by Anna Groff, Good Books and Mennonite Publishing Network

Print Article

Rosanna of the Amish: fact and fiction
Much as author Joseph W. Yoder had convinced readers, editors and critics for a half century that his book was—as he claimed—factual, so today a growing consensus among scholars also would call it fiction. 

The factual nature of the book was especially believable because according to Yoder’s biographer Julia Spicher Kasdorf, the author “was provoked to write this book” and said it was “based on fact.” Yoder had grown “disgusted with the unflattering and inaccurate representations of the Amish people” as they appeared in the popular literature of the 1930s and 1940s.

By the turn of the 21st century, over 400,000 copies of the book had been sold, and in the 1995 “centennial edition,” his grand-niece Rosanna Yoder Hostetler, who vividly remembered the dramatic singer and writer, wrote a new foreword. She would simply say: “Rosanna is not fiction. It is notable for its documented settings, names and happenings.”
Staff members of the publisher, Herald Press, had no reason to believe otherwise—constantly updating it on what the Amish were “really like” and selling it to a growing tourist market.

Kasdorf, a professor at Penn State University, led the re-assessment was and wrote a new introduction to the most recent Herald Press edition of Rosanna. She says that Yoder’s book on his mother was “based on fact” only “in a figurative sense.”

Even before the scholarly dissenters from Rosanna’s factual history went public, there were rumblings in Yoder’s beloved Big Valley in Pennsylvania. One local informant cited in Kasdorf’s biography said, “It’s too bad J. W. Yoder did not write something that was true.”

Mifflin County Amish and Mennonite historian Duane Kauffman hinted in the same direction in his 1991 history but then went public in the July 2008 issue of Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage with an article entitled, “Rosanna of the Amish: Fact or Fiction?”

In the new “The Restored Text” edition, Kasdorf recasts the book as an example of “local color” or “regional” literature. Kasdorf says that Yoder wrote to resist the negative stereotypes and bias that plain Anabaptists suffered in his time. Although Yoder may have accomplished important cultural work, he misrepresented his project, says Kasdorf. Thus the 1940s classic enters contemporary debates about factuality in memoirs and other works of non-fiction.

As literature, it may matter less that Rosanna’s brothers, William and John, were likely her uncles;  that Scranton, Pa., and railroad lines between various points in the tale did not exist at the time; and that census records have Rosanna’s parents born in Pennsylvania, not in Ireland as Yoder would have it.—Mennonite Publishing Network


Reuben and the Balloon celebrated with ride
Lively Amish farm boy, Reuben, is back in the new children’s book, Reuben and the Balloon, from the bestselling duo, Merle Good and P. Buckley Moss.

P. Buckley Moss and Merle Good (right) launch their new children’s book release with a hot air balloon ride. Stan Hess of United States Hot Air Balloon Team is also pictured. Photo by Dean Mast.







Moss and Good appeared at The P. Buckley Moss Gallery in Intercourse, Pa., on Sept. 19 and 20, to sign copies of their new book (published by Good Books) and prints of artwork from the book. 

Three fans of the series took a free hot air balloon ride at sunrise (see photo at right) on Sept. 20 to celebrate the book’s release. The three readers were chosen from a drawing at The Gallery and were the special guests of Good, author, and Moss, artist. The previous three children’s books by the same team have sold more than 135,000 copies.

To commemorate the release of Reuben and the Balloon, Moss has created two new paintings entitled “Balloons Aloft” and “Balloon in Our Orchard.” The paintings have been published as limited edition prints and were released first at the show.—Good Books 


Mennonite Men book sells to Methodists
Copies of Wrestling with God: Devotional Readings for Men are now finding their way into the homes of United Methodist men. In September, United Methodist Men Ministries ordered 6,500 copies of Wrestling with God (Faith and Life Resources, 2007).  J. Lorne Peachey and Gordon Houser wrote the book’s proposal at the request of Jim Gingerich, Mennonite Men coordinator. Byron Rempel-Burkholder served as the book’s editor.

United Methodist Men Ministries learned of the book through Gingerich and Mennonite Men. Both men’s groups are members of the Denominational Men’s Ministry Network of North America, an ecumenical organization with one of its goals to share resources.

“I would see this as one of the benefits of being involved in the larger ecumenical scene,” said Gingerich on Oct 1. “It doesn’t help Mennonite Men financially, but it is some pretty good promotion for us and Mennonite Publishing Network.”

After Mennonite Men shared the book with the network a year and a half ago, Larry Malone, director for United Methodist Men Ministries, picked up on the book suggestion and placed the order. The books are sent to donors to United Methodist Men Ministries.

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