Excerpt from Life, and Death, and Giants by Ron Rindo, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Though quarrelsome, Father could also be exceedingly generous. In fact, I believed him to be the most pious and generous man I knew. One summer I asked for a baseball glove, but Mother refused to buy it. She said baseball was a boys' game. But a few days later, when I arrived in the mill for work, I found a new baseball glove hanging on the nail where I kept my dust apron. Excitedly, I tried it on. Father winked at me, said, "Hang that back up now, Hannah. You can't push a broom with that contraption on your hand." I know of many Amish families and young widows suffering from poverty, illness, or some other affliction and short of firewood who woke up one frigid winter morning to discover two free cords of slab wood had been delivered secretly in the night, cut and stacked and already seasoned, ready for burning. I know this because I sometimes accompanied Father on these midnight missions, helping to stack the wood, my fingers numb, breath clouds of vapor. On the way home, he'd put the reins in my hands, let me lead the horses, while he tipped his head back and looked at the stars.

When I was seventeen, I fell in love with Josiah, a poor local boy, who worked in a cabinet shop for a man who often purchased wood from my father. With no land of his own, upon our engagement, Josiah accepted my parents' offer to deed us forty acres of land along the river, contiguous to their own, and with help from Father, Josiah's brothers, and friends, Josiah built our house. It is a modest home, strongly built, with a root cellar beneath the kitchen. After a year we raised our own barn, and I began to keep milk goats, as my family once did, while Josiah started his own carpentry business. Like most of our people, we have no electricity or family telephone, though Josiah keeps a cell phone for business, as many do. Josiah's work is contracted nearly a year in advance, and he keeps a calendar in our desk drawer with his schedule posted. Josiah is skillful and responsible, charges a fair price, keeps his word, and does high-quality work. It is surprising that these qualities are so rare in the English world, where the rule seems to be to charge as much as you can for something as cheaply made as possible, though it is impertinent of me to say so. Before I met Dr. Kennedy, I often wondered why anyone would willingly choose to live in a world so rife with corruption and false promises, where everything worshipped is transitory. My mother used to say we Amish have much that is beautiful about America without accepting her ugliness. I don't know if that is true.

For years, after Sunday services, Josiah and I hosted a family gathering for restful fellowship and an early dinner. By this time, Meg, Abel, and John had moved away, but my oldest brother, Thomas, lived the next church district over, and he would come with his wife and five children. My mother and father always joined us as well, wandering across the lawn from their home next door. Though he worked tirelessly the other six days of the week, Sundays my father took seriously the Lord's admonition to rest. The scent of frying chickens, roasting potatoes, and baking fruit pies would linger in the air as we all talked and laughed and sang. Those were beautiful days! When it got too noisy in the house, Father would take Rachel and his other grandchildren outside, where they'd play freeze tag or hide and seek. Sometimes Father would pitch a baseball and cheer every time one of the children hit it with a broomstick into the pasture, scattering my goats. On the hottest days, Father would lead them down to the river, where he'd sit high on the bank in the sunshine, slide his suspenders down over his shoulders for comfort, and relax. The little boys would roll their pants over their knees, and Rachel and the other girls would bunch their dresses up around their thighs to wade barefoot in the cold, rushing water.

If he'd had a difficult week, Father would lie back in the sun, his straw hat tipped over his face, rest both hands on his chest, and fall asleep. An hour or so later, when we rang the dinner bell, the children would wake him and fight over who got to lead him by the hand back to the house. Because Rachel had been working in the mill every week, sweeping sawdust, carrying slab wood, as I had as a young girl, he'd often choose her, prompting the other children to complain of favoritism. So, he began holding his hands high, offering them to the first child who could recite a chosen Bible verse. Once, I was with them when he asked someone to name the fruits of the spirit. Rachel immediately recited the list, from Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This earned her a kiss on the head and Father's large, calloused hand in hers as we all walked back to the house.

Excerpted from Life, and Death, and Giants by Ron Rindo. Copyright © 2025 by Ron Rindo. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.