Amanda Farmer – författare

As a teenage Mennonite girl, Amanda lives with her close-knit family in south central Pennsylvania. Life revolves around hard work, faith, and commitment to the family. She doesnt question the daily routine; its the only life shes known. Her father talks about buying a farm out west with a lot of land in one block. Not only will the family farm there together, but the parents hope to begin a new Mennonite community. To a fifteen-year-old girl, this move begins as an exciting adventure.

In If You leave this Farm, Amanda shares the story of her familys relocation to Minnesota and the subsequent challenges they face as farmers, a family, and Mennonites. She tells how the first crop year was a huge failure and her father alone makes the decision to expand the new dairy in an attempt to recoup the losses. This memoir chronicles the years of struggle as Amanda and her younger brother Joseph seek to escape their fathers suffocating and controlling behavior.

Intermingled with the struggle on the farm is the effort to become an accepted member of the Minnesota Mennonite community. The change in Amandas fathers behavior and attitude during the first years in Minnesota alienates him and his family from others of the same faith. She shares a mix of emotions as she wrestles with the shame of her familys standing with the Mennonites and the crushing weight of constant submission to her fathers misguided use of his God-given authority.

This sequel to If You Leave This Farm chronicles the life adventures of this young Mennonite lady who, after choosing to walk away from her fathers farm at age 29, is now free to make her own choices as an adult. Amanda shares the joy of discovering the world away from the farm, of falling in love, and about her decision to eventually leave the Mennonite church. But that freedom and joy is tainted by the continuing intertwined and overpowering conflicts that result from unspoken and unresolved expectations in her family of origin.

With an engaging style, Amanda provides an honest glimpse into her roller coaster journey of hope and love alternating with pain, hurt and bitterness as a result of misplaced familial values, favoritism, and the effect of the ultimate rejection disinheritance by her parents.

No Longer a Child of Promise vividly portrays the struggle in one womans heart to grasp the meaning of forgiveness, to experience triumph and acceptance in her personal journey, and to eventually release the all-consuming pain of rejection in her heart to God.