Blood of the Prodigal (Ohio Amish Mystery Series #1) - Softcover

P. L. Gaus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0821412779 ISBN 13: 9780821412770

Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2014

Synopsis

P. L. Gaus’s Blood of the Prodigal, a mystery in the tradition of Tony Hillerman, is back in a new edition, including an exclusive interview with the author, discussion questions for reading groups, and a detailed map and driving guide to Holmes County, Ohio, with everything one needs to visit the iconic scenes depicted in the story.

In Holmes County, Ohio—home to the largest Amish and Mennonite settlements in the world—mystery and foreboding lurk in the quiet Old Order Amish community led by Bishop Eli Miller.The illusion of peace is shattered one early morning when a young Amish boy goes missing—abducted from his home and from Bishop Miller’s care. At first, the bishop suspects the child’s father, who was exiled from the Old Order ten years ago, but a murder soon casts doubt on the bishop’s theory. With a strong distrust of law enforcement and the modern “English” ways, the bishop must put his faith in an unlikely partnership with Professor Michael Branden before it’s too late.

With the help of the peaceful pastor Cal Troyer and the reckless Sheriff Bruce Robertson, Branden plunges headlong into the closed culture to unravel the mystery of the missing child and uncover truths many would prefer to leave undisturbed.

About this title

About the Author:

P. L. Gaus is the author of seven books in the Amish-Country Mystery series. He lives in Wooster, Ohio, an area that is close to the world’s largest settlement of Amish and Mennonite people. Gaus lectures widely about the lifestyles, culture, and religion of the Amish.

Visit his website at P. L. Gaus

From Kirkus Reviews:

paper 0-8214-1277-9 Members of Ohio's Amish community are slow to trust the outsiders they call the English, so it's quite a surprise when Old Order Bishop Eli Miller approaches Professor Michael Branden, a Millersburg College historian, to ask his help in finding his missing grandson Jeremiah. The boy's been taken, the bishop says, by Jeremiahs his father Jonah, the son Eli Miller had cast out of the community ten years ago after he got Brenda Hostettler, a local non-Amish woman, pregnant with Jeremiah, who was born shortly before his mother killed herself. Determined now to keep Branden's investigation under his control, the bishop asks him to find Jonah and Jeremiah without alerting the authoritiesor anyone elsethat the boy is being held against his will and without attempting to bring Jeremiah home by force. It's a troubling list of restrictions, and the situation becomes even more touchy when the body of Jonah, dressed in the Amish garb he hadn't worn for ten years, is found alongside the road a mile from his father's house. Who shot Jonah to death, and what's become of the son he wanted to see a little of the world? The puzzle, turning on a single clue, is negligible, and the pace very, very slow. The charm of Gaus's first novel lies in its gently penetrating portrait of conflicts within the deceptively quiet contemporary Amish community. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0821412779
• ISBN 13: 9780821412770
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 230