A Community of Memory: My Days with George and Clara

In this fascinating series
        of narratives, many voices of Jeff Gundy's Amish and Mennonite forebears
        trace their paths and chronicle their lives. Women and men speak in these
        pages, telling their stories and linking themselves to each other, the
        past, and the present. Gundy demonstrates that who he is--who we all are--is
        shaped by a past peopled with those who worked, loved, dreamed, and died.
        By sharing his community of memory, he makes us desire to seek out our
        own.
      Using family photos, records,
        recollections, and historical research, Gundy follows seven generations
        through time and space: from Bavaria and Alsace to Ohio to Illinois in
        the 1830s; from frontier dwellings with dirt floors to homes with refrigerators.
        He also follows them intellectually, from a strict to a broader interpretation
        of religious doctrine in the 1870s, which led to a schism within the already
        small Mennonite community; from a long-standing position on pacifism and
        conscientious objection to some questioning of this stance during World
        War II.
 

Jeff Gundy is a professor of English at Bluffton College, Ohio.