Wow! The Amish lifestyle is nothing like I had always envisioned...perfect and God-fearing. But, according to this ex-Amish, they are more concerned with keeping with rituals and traditions and mainly the ordinances of the church rather than a close, personal relationship with God. I never would have dreamed. The hypocracy and strict, man-made guidelines for living in every aspect of life are finding more and more young folks wanting to leave their community. This is a good read just not very exciting. When the author gets into talking about his organization and how it has saved people, I found it a little long winded and a bit repetitive.

Joe Keim, one of fourteen children, was born and raised in Ashland, Ohio. It was his grandfather who left a more liberal Amish community and brought his family here and started a new Old Order Amish community with more strict do's and don'ts. Each Amish community adopts their own by-laws and rules and regulations to live by. But, you can tell the difference between the older, more strict order and the newer more liberal order by the size of the men's hats and the ladie's bonnets. The older order requires larger rims on the hats and larger bonnets covering all the women's hair.

Joe's story gives you a rare insight into the real lives of the Amish people. He started rebelling at age 15 when his father told him that he was worthless and didn't even know why he fed him. The Amish are surprisingly not known for outward expressions of love. He even tried three times to leave the Amish community, but his father came for him and talked him into returning before he was excommunicated.

At age twenty, he and his girlfriend finally made a break for it. He became saved, they married and later created an organization called MAPS (Mission to Amish People) where they help the Amish transition outside of the Amish community by offering support and help in getting birth certificates and social security cards for employment. But mainly MAPS introduces them to Jesus Christ and helps them find a church that focuses on the written word. ( )

I was expecting this story to be more focused on the childhood and lives of the Amish, but it is pretty narrowly focused on the how everything relates to the author's religious experience. His Amish community was unusually narrow-minded and strict, even in the context of the Amish, and he blames a lot of that culture on their particular religious beliefs. He also credits the better life he has made for himself largely to the more expansive version of Christianity that he has embraced outside of the Amish community.


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A short book, which I read on my Kindle. It's about the author's life growing up in an 'old order' Amish community in the United States, and his decision to leave it.

It opens with a good hook, and the first half is interesting and informative, if rather sad in places. The author meets 'English' Christians - Baptists - who invite him to follow Jesus, something he feels is lacking in his home and community. But there's a rigidity about them that I found disturbing in places.

I also felt that there was rather too much 'preaching' in the latter part of the book. The author makes his point several times, and I had to skim quite a bit towards the end.

Still, it's free for the Kindle, and much of it is interesting.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2020/02/my-people-amish-by-joe-keim.html ( )

Living in Ohio, as the author does, I am familiar with many of the surnames he mentions: Keim, Yoder, etc. I was not aware of the Old Order move to Ashland, OH and appreciated that history. I do know that each district can have different rules--what the author calls the Ordinance Letter and what most Amish fiction calls the Ordnung--so I know rules can differ between different groups.

In this book, Joe Keim attempts to share his experience growing up in an Amish family and what about it caused him to leave the Amish community. Keim puts this on the fact that the Amish he grew up with believed in lots of hard work but rarely voiced appreciation for the hard work or a job well done, or for putting the family first. Because of this, he looked elsewhere for the approval he wanted from his father. In fact, Joe leaves several times, but returns prior to leaving with his wife Esther (also Amish) for good. (Though in recent years, he does seem to have somewhat reconciled with his Amish family, though I was dismayed to see some of the shunning practices continue (such as having to eat at different tables and being served from different containers) even though the immediate family does seem to have accepted them back in some form.)

Keim and his wife eventually began a ministry to help those leaving the Amish to make their way in the world as well as to try to take the message of Christian salvation to the Amish. ( )