Out of This World: A Journey of Healing (Bur Oak Book) - Softcover

Swander, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1587296373 ISBN 13: 9781587296376

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 2008

Synopsis

When a life-threatening allergic illness demanded that she eat only organically grown food, writer and professor Mary Swander built a new life in a former one-room Iowa schoolhouse in the middle of the largest Amish community west of the Mississippi. In this rich and engaging memoir, which follows the course of a farmer’s year, she writes from the well-named Fairview School to share the radical transformation of her life.

From her perch in rural Kalona, Iowa, Swander discovers new strength and self-reliance along with a community of hardworking and hospitable neighbors. Raising goats and poultry, participating in barn raisings and auctions, protecting her garden from a plague of grasshoppers, creating a living crèche at Christmastime, all the while laughing at her attempts to wrestle with the pioneer challenges of midwestern winters and summers, she explores what it means to be a lone physical and spiritual homesteader at the end of the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Swander is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University. A regular commentator on Iowa Public Radio, she is the author of, among others, The Desert Pilgrim, Heaven-and-Earth House, Driving the Body Back (Iowa paperback, 1998), and Parsnips in the Snow (with Jane Staw, Iowa, 1990), and editor of The Healing Circle: Authors on Recovery from Illness, Bloom and Blossom, and Land of the Fragile Giants (with Cornelia Mutel, Iowa, 1994).

From Booklist

After a severe allergic reaction had left her with the symptoms of environmental illness (unable to tolerate the pollutants and food found in the modern world), Swander decided to change her lifestyle and move into a one-room Iowa schoolhouse on the outskirts of an Amish community. Her book is an account of that lifestyle change and the strength and self-sufficiency she developed as a result. Completely incapable of stomaching commercially grown food, Swander existed at first on a diet of roadkill, frog legs, and yucca and other exotic plants. Slowly, with the help of her Amish neighbors, she became proficient at growing her own organic fruits and vegetables, improving her health both physically and spiritually. The story of her illness and recovery is fascinating, but readers who are expecting an immersion into Amish culture will be disappointed. The references to the Amish are merely anecdotal; the true gist of this book is the reawakening of Swander's spirituality, brought about by her close association with her down-to-earth, no-frills neighbors. Although interesting for its portrayal of the hardship and determination of those choosing a more primitive lifestyle, the story, unfortunately, often gets bogged down in New-Age^-type introspection. Kathleen Hughes

About this edition

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1587296373
• ISBN 13: 9781587296376
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288