Plain tells the story of Mary Alice Hostetter's journey to define an authentic self amid a rigid religious upbringing in a Mennonite farm family. Although...

Plain tells the story of Mary Alice Hostetter's journey to define an authentic self amid a rigid religious upbringing in a Mennonite farm family. Although endowed with a personality "prone toward questioning and challenging," the young Mary Alice at first wants nothing more than to be a good girl, to do her share, and--alongside her eleven siblings--to work her family's Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, farm. She feels fortunate to have been born into a religion where, as the familiar hymn states, she is "safe in the arms of Jesus." As an adolescent, that keen desire for belonging becomes focused on her worldly peers, even though she knows that Mennonites consider themselves a people apart. Eventually she leaves behind the fields and fences of her youth, thinking she will finally be able to grow beyond the prohibitions of her church. Discovering and accepting her sexuality, she once again finds herself apart, on the outside of family, community, and societal norms.

This quietly powerful memoir of longing and acceptance casts a humanizing eye on a little-understood American religious tradition and a woman's striving to grow within and beyond it.


Author: Mary Alice Hostetter
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 12/06/2022
Pages: 168
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.58h x 5.51w x 0.63d
ISBN: 9780299340407


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/17/2022
Foreword 10/27/2022
Booklist 11/01/2022 pg. 6
Shelf Awareness 12/30/2022

About the Author
Mary Alice Hostetter grew up the tenth of twelve children in a Mennonite farm family and is a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. While pursuing a career in education and human services, with a brief lapse into cheesemaking and restaurant management, she has studied writing whenever and wherever she could.