The October 2024 issue of Anabaptist World includes several mini reviews of recent books.
Captured by Gangsters (TGS International/Christian Aid Ministries) is a short account of the 17 Mennonite missionaries held hostage in Haiti for two months in 2021. The missionaries had visited an orphanage sponsored by Christian Aid Ministries and were taken hostage on the way to their next destination. The group included adults and several children, including an infant. They were sure they were going to be shot when the gangsters, holding guns, lined them up against a building. The missionaries began to sing. The leader ordered them to be quiet, but they continued. When the gangsters searched them, took their shoes and forced them inside the building, it was clear they were to be hostages. Taken from interviews and diaries the missionaries kept on paper towels, Captured by Gangsters describes the living conditions, hardships and even joys the missionaries experienced while in captivity. They held daily worship and prayed around the clock. They discussed escape, made plans, and a way opened: A generator provided noise cover, and the gangsters were focused on their phones. The missionaries walked through the night and found someone who let them make a phone call to the Christian Aid Ministries base. Written by Louise Brubacher in clear, simple prose, the book includes a map of the missionaries’ journey and lyrics of a hymn they sang. — Eileen Kinch
Lovina Eicher, author of a widely read newspaper column about Amish life and cooking, is celebrating the 10th anniversary of taking over the column her mother started with The Cherished Table: Recipes and Stories from an Amish Kitchen (Herald). Eicher collects recipes that don’t require special trips to special stores for special ingredients. She intersperses the instructions with anecdotes about canning season, butchering days and making the most of a garden’s bounty. Many recipes are classics, but there is room also for relative newcomers such as green grape pie, a griddle sandwich inspired by a daughter’s job at McDonald’s and the secret to making “mystery biscuits.” Richly illustrated with bucolic photography that respects religious restraints, The Cherished Table might even preview the family’s next chapter in passing down the column like an heirloom, with insights from daughters Verena, Lovina, Susan and Loretta. The days of raising eight children are in the past, as the Eichers have transitioned to grandparenthood, so many recipes have been scaled down for smaller households. Still, this volume finds room for sections on larger recipes to feed a crowd or to do together with children interested in getting their hands dirty. — Tim Huber
Draft resistance in U.S. history is remembered mostly for the turbulent Vietnam War era, with a smaller movement of religiously motivated objection during the Second World War. Jerry Elmer’s Conscription, Conscientious Objection and Draft Resistance in American History (Brill) goes deeper, beginning with pre-Revolutionary War colonial militia drafts. A draft resister during the Vietnam War, Elmer examines each era’s laws and how they were implemented for conscription and court decisions. The overview includes opposition to conscription, both legal and illegal, in which Elmer participated: burglaries of 14 draft boards in three cities and numerous protests and vigils. The book is the first volume in Brill’s “Studies in Peace History” series, which promotes new scholarship on peace history and the movements and people that opposed war and its causes. Elmer acknowledges the assistance of Duane Stoltzfus of Goshen College, Frank Peachey and Fern Habecker of Mennonite Central Committee’s archives and Anne Yoder, former interim director of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. He is also the author of Felon for Peace: The Memoir of a Vietnam-Era Draft Resister (Vanderbilt University Press), which has also been published in Vietnamese. — Tim Huber
When their second child was born, Sheryl and Wesley Leinbach were overjoyed. But a few days later, it was clear something was wrong. Louisa wasn’t eating well, and she had a piercing wail. After a round of tests, the doctor explained that Louisa had Maple Syrup Urine Disease. “It is genetic,” he said. “This mutation happened because you are Mennonites.”
Leinbach was shocked. “I had thought Mennonite heritage a thing of value, a blessing,” she wrote. How could something so good be causing her daughter such pain? The Leinbachs were referred to the Clinic for Special Children, then in Strasburg, Pa., where Dr. Howard Morton and Dr. Richard Strauss helped the family navigate MSUD, brain swelling and normal childhood illnesses that sent Louisa to the hospital and an eventual liver transplant.
Leinbach learned she was a carrier for MSUD, and so was her husband. Many Mennonites in Lancaster County are carriers because an ancestor from Europe — possibly Hans Groff or Hans Herr, from whom many Lancaster County Mennonites are descended — had MSUD. When Mennonite carriers of MSUD marry each other, the likelihood of children having the disease is high.
Written for a Conservative Mennonite audience, Fragile Heritage: Untangling the Strands of Faith and Mutation (Christian Light Publications) provides information about MSUD and offers support for families coping with the disease. Leinbach suggests dating couples get tested for MSUD as part of their discernment.
Fragile Heritage is a heartfelt meditation on God’s goodness in a deeply imperfect world. Leinbach is honest about her struggles and the struggles of her family. She doesn’t understand why Louisa suffered so much. With the liver transplant, Louisa now is healthy. God is good, merciful and kind, Leinbach says: “This is the God I find at the end of all my questions.” — Eileen Kinch
The subtitle describes this charming yet challenging memoir: Once Upon a Time There Was a Three-Year-Old Grandpa: A Kaleidoscope of Farmer-Boy Stories with Reflections on Character, Wisdom and Community (Resource Publications). David Janzen, author of The Intentional Christian Community Handbook and Seven Radical Elders, offers many details and humorous stories about growing up on a Kansas farm in the 1940s and ’50s. These lead to didactic reflections on a life of discipleship. He divides the book into five “mirrors”: A Mennonite Farm Boy Takes Root, What’s a Honyak?, Seven Careers for Seven Decades, Family Ties That Bind and Loose, and Bearing Fruit in Old Age. Janzen writes: “I am not just telling the facts of the story, but I am creating a world in the imagination of the readers, allowing them to enter into another person’s viewpoint and experience.” That’s a good description of any memoir, and this one is worth dipping into. — Gordon Houser
Canadian Mennonite writer Sarah Klassen has published eight books of poetry and is perhaps most recognized for her 1988 collection Journey to Yalta. Her poems have been widely anthologized in Canada and appear in U.S. anthologies such as A Capella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry and Tongue Screws and Testimonies: Poems, Stories and Essays Inspired by the Martyrs Mirror.
New and Selected Poems of Sarah Klassen (CMU Press) features poems from Klassen’s previously published books and includes new work. The book has a thoughtful introduction by editor Nathan Dueck, and the Acknowledgements and Notes section provides a helpful listing of Klassen’s poetry books.
The poems are marked by keen observation: “Apples in the bowl glow, everything haloed in radiance” from the morning sunshine, in one poem. In another, “Every move we make, /the quick tilting of a head / . . . invites light.” Klassen’s details are painterly. A bowl of fruit on a rumpled tablecloth resembles a still life.
Klassen’s eye for art comes to the forefront in ekphrastic poems based on paintings by Edward Hopper and Odilon Redon. Another poem addresses music. “A Curious Beatitude” is a meditation inspired by listening to Brahms.
Klassen also takes on grief, suffering and war. “Small Deaths” and “Born of Woman” address infant mortality in Klassen’s family. Other poems focus on suffering and memory, including “Guide to the KGB Museum” and “Stars to Steer By.” In another section, Klassen explores the life of mystic and political activist Simone Weil through a series of personal poems.
When Klassen meditates on nature and scripture, quiet observation leads to reflection. A loping coyote in the winter sunlight becomes a means to consider letting go of old grudges. In “Magnificat,” the meditation begins on a snowy street with hedges and garbage cans and turns to the humorous impossibility of Mary’s song: “She might as well have said / . . . snow-capped lids of garbage bins / clap noisily for joy.”
Klassen’s poems, lyrical and deeply reflective, are like the light that appears throughout her work. These poems are stars to steer by. — Eileen Kinch
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