Amish-Country Mysteries

First Death - an accident or a homicide? Second Death - a murder or a suicide? Events unfold quickly on a single Monday, the first day of classes for Professor Michael Branden's new semester. The tragedies envelope a Schwartzentruber sect, the most conservative of all Amish peoples, and Branden and Sheriff Bruce Robertson must wrestle with cultural and religious barriers in order to investigate. To make matters worse, a mother of seven Schwartzentruber children has apparently left with her youngest daughter Esther, in order to escape her dangerously depressed husband. Has she really left six children behind?

Amish bishop Small Henry Rupp has the burden on his heart that the people of his congregation in Holmes County, Ohio, have become to complacent with English attitudes and culture, and he is especially worried about the corrosive impact that tourism and commerce are having on the religious separatism that his congregation is supposed to maintain. His desire is to erradicate all modern influences in the lives of his people, and the solution that he is devising will surprise everyone, Amish and English alike. The problem is, one of his parishoners has now been murdered, and her husband is lying in the hospital in a coma, keeping devastating secrets from his bishop, apparently in unrepentant fashion.