The Road to Aylmer: Secrets of an Amish Life

In The Road to Aylmer: Secrets of an Amish Life, author James Stoll, together with Carolyn Stoll, offers deep insights into the Amish lifestyle by relaying his personal experiences in an Old Order Amish family for over thirty years. Written in first person and reading at times like a coming-of-age novel, Stoll shares his earliest memories growing up with his deeply devoted family.

As he recounts, Stoll and his brothers were trained at an early age in the family farming operation, and they moved often in order to continue to practice the tenets of their faith. Stoll married a woman within their community, as is their custom, and they spent their first nine years in the same settlement as the rest of the family.

But when Stoll's father decided to move to Honduras to pursue a more primitive lifestyle, Stoll and his wife elected to stay behind and move to a community in Pennsylvania. They soon learned to depend more upon their English neighbors—and a crisis of belief sees them make a decision that will change their lives forever.