In the Valley of the Shadow: An Elegy to Lancaster County

This compassionate examination of the dilemmas facing the Amish and Mennonite communities in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania focuses on the controversy surrounding construction of a 600-unit retirement complex on prime farmland. Through interviews, personal accounts, and newspaper reports of the controversy, Randy-Michael Testa traces the cultural and economic erosion that is threatening a unique minority, and Ed Worteck's evocative photos capture a physical destruction indicative of greater moral decay. The interplay of politics, deception, bigotry, and beleaguered faith succumbing to the age of technology vividly portrays "a place struggling to keep its spiritual dignity, a place where modernity thunders over tradition, as time races ahead."

Randy-Michael Testa is Assistant Visiting Professor of Education at Dartmouth College.