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Book Review of Crossing Over: One Woman's Escape from Amish Life

Crossing Over: One Woman's Escape from Amish Life
reviewed on
Helpful Score: 7


Anyone who likes Beverly Lewis' books on the Amish will find this one interesting, as it takes up the "shun" and many other cultural and religious matters that Lewis takes up in her novels. The case of old-order Amish who leave is rather different from the situation of people in other, modern, religions that stress "being separate from the world," in that the Amish generally live in all-Amish communities and have limited opportunities to know anything else.
Lewis' books mainly show Amish life in a positive light, though touching on some of its difficulties and unreasonableness (such as the mistrust of Bible study and the havoc that can be wreaked by a dogmatic local religious leader), but this book--being the story of one who chose to leave--reveals a lot of the negatives.