Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years

Accurately reveals the challenges faced by Amish youth caught between the expectations of traditional community and the pressures and temptations of adolescence.

On the surface, it appears that little has changed for Amish youth in the past decade: children learn to work hard early in life, they complete school by age fourteen or fifteen, and a year or two later they begin Rumspringa—that brief period during which they are free to date and explore the outside world before choosing whether to...