The photo shows a typical Ashland County Swartzentruber Amish farm. Houses are white with brick chimneys. All other buildings-wash house, barn, buggy shop or work shop - are painted red. Swartzentruber spreads will usually have a main house for the family. There may also be what's called a dawdy haus, or grandfather house, for elderly parents. The dawdy haus is nearly identical to the main house but smaller. The turned earth in the foreground of this picture is a key to understanding the Swartzentruber way of life. Over 75 percent of Swartzentruber men still work on their farms when nearly 50 percent of Amish men from more liberal orders work off the farm. Swartzentrubers are deeply committed to keeping their men at home and their families together. Too much time off the farm is too much time spent in the outside world. Because of this and other strict rules of behavior, Swartzentruber Amish retain nearly 90 percent of their young, while more liberal orders lose many more of their young to the English world. The clothesline running from the house to the barn tells one story of a Swartzentruber woman's world. The women I know best make every stitch of clothes for their entire families. Since Swartzentruber families usually have from eight to twelve or even more children, washing clothes is no small task, especially when the water has to be heated in the wash house. Even Swartzentruber Amish women are permitted to use washing machines, as long as the machine is reconfigured to run a belt from it to a small lawnmower engine. Without a dryer, the clothes are hung on a clothesline that operates on a pulley system.

Listen to Joe Mackall on NPR's All Things Considered

“While maintaining a personal narrative voice, Mackall folds in a succinct and engaging history of the Anabaptist religious tradition and the polity of the Amish church. This added context greatly enhances the more personal stories. ” (Read the full review)

—Tom Montgomery-Fate , Boston Globe

“The book takes us inside a very private world, plus it's a wonderful manual on how two people of different faiths can be good friends, even when they don't always agree on fundamental issues.” (Read the full interview)

—David Ian Miller, San Francisco Chronicle, interviews Joe Mackall

“Through recording and expressing his intimate experiences studying the Amish, Mackall had to fight the duality of being an observant writer and loyal friend.” (Read the full article)

—Jen Ditlevson, Ashland Times-Gazette

“Plain Secrets details Mackall’s friendship with the family of Amish minister Samuel Shetler, his wife, Mary, and their nine children. To protect their privacy, Mackall changed the names of all the Amish people he portrayed in the book, but remained faithful to the details of their lives as horse-drawn farmers and members of the conservative Swartzentruber church. Mackall also writes in Plain Secrets about Jonas, a young Amish man who struggles with his faith and lifestyle before leaving his community for a life and job in a nearby town. At the heart of the book is Mackall’s contrast between Jonas’ uncertainty about remaining Amish and the simple but sure faith expressed by Samuel and his family.” (Read the full article)

—Robert Rhodes, Mennonite Weekly Review

“Mackall's writing is an honest and refreshing change from the customary saccharin scribbling about the Noble Amish Man. Despite, or perhaps because of, Mackall's refusal to perch the Amish on a pedestal, he manages to convey a deep respect for the people.” (Read the full review)

—Jack Brubaker, Lancaster New Era

“In prose as graceful as it is unsentimental, the Ashland University professor of English and journalism tries to set the record straight—at least about his neighbors, the Schwartzentruber Amish of northern Ohio.” (Read the full review)

—Brigid Brett, LA Times

“By focusing on the loves and losses of one large Amish clan, Mackall breathes life into a complex group often idealized or caricatured . . . it is a deeply respectful account that never veers toward sensationalism.” (Read the full review)

—Publishers Weekly

“Wonderful and enlightening . . . This is a loving portrait, warts and all, of an often-misunderstood people.”

—June Sawyers, Booklist

“Mackall does the job beautifully, painting an intimate portrait of the family that leaves the reader feeling humbled by the common thread that’s woven into all of us.”

—Sarah English, Cleveland Magazine

“He has great respect for their devotion to family, their close connection with the land, and their cohesive and supportive community life.” (Read the full article)

—Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice

“Joe Mackall’s Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish meets the biggest challenge of a book such as this by living up to his subtitle: Mackall is both outside and among in equal measure, and it's the most difficult terrain to occupy. Plain Secrets vibrates in that in-betweenness, in ways that only songs or poems usually can, and it does so in prose that's as clear as water. It's built the way the Amish build their barns—everything here is plumb and level.”

—Diana Hume George, author of The Lonely Other: A Woman Watching America

“In simple but elegant prose that matches the values of his subject, Joe Mackall takes us deep into the Amish community. He neither romanticizes nor condemns an alternative way of living, but provides stunning insight through the generosity and compassion of his own heart.”

—Chris Offutt, author of The Same River Twice and Kentucky Straight

“Joe Mackall's patience, empathy, and dogged curiosity illuminate this fine, fascinating study of an elusive culture. Plain Secrets is a provocative, humbling, and soulful book.”

—Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy