Gone Missing


Rumspringa is the time when Amish teens are allowed to experience life without the rules. It’s an exciting time of personal discovery and growth before committing to the church. But when a young teen disappears without a trace, the carefree fun comes to an abrupt and sinister end, and fear spreads through the community like a contagion.

A missing child is a nightmare to all parents, and never more so than in the Amish community, where family ties run deep. When the search for the presumed runaway turns up a dead body, the case quickly becomes a murder investigation. And chief of Police Kate Burkholder knows that in order to solve this case she will have to call upon everything she has to give not only as a cop, but as a woman whose own Amish roots run deep.

Kate and state agent, John Tomasetti, delve into the lives of the missing teen and discover links to cold cases that may go back years. But will Kate piece together all the parts of this sinister puzzle in time to save the missing teen and the Amish community from a devastating fate? Or will she find herself locked in a fight to the death with a merciless killer?

Amazon review.

My Favorite Cashew

Carroll County, Indiana resident C.B. Anderson, who we know locally as Cindi Anderson, has written a memoir of her husband, Dr. Tom Anderson (Doc Anderson), a beloved country doctor. Doc was not your typical doctor but was one who charged little, sometimes nothing. He wanted to be a doctor, not to make lots of money, but to merely help. And that he did! (Doc passed away in 2008).

The story is written for several reasons. Yes, to honor Doc but also for the purpose of  encouragement to any who have suffered and are yet suffering from being sexually abused as a child. This book shows how such horrific childhood abuses, on any scale, stay with you for a lifetime!  Cindi also wrote to encourage any suffering from bipolar disorder, as Doc. himself did. 

C.B. Anderson, in My Favorite Cashew,  is honest and real as she shares their years of mariage, Doc's grieving for the love he felt he missed as a child, their country-style existence, and the ups and downs of depression and sorrow from childhood trauma.  It's a memoir and it's special.  

This book comes electronically and in paper and is available at the Delphi Public Library.

Along the Way: the journey of a father and son

Along the way: the journey of a father and son by Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, with Hope Edelman

This double-memoir,  written by actors Martin Sheen and his son, Emilio Estevez takes us a journey which shares stories of their lives, careers and their relationships.

Alternating chapters between one another, I found Sheen's life very intriguing. The son of a Spanish immigrant father and an Irish immigrant mother, Martin was raised in Dayton, Ohio and offered an insight on what it was like to be a member of a large, Catholic family, focusing on the trials and tribulations of how a young man takes on the challenge of following his dream of becoming an actor while also raising his family of four.

His son Emilio recounts his experiences on various movie locations with his father and as we soon begin to notice similarities between father and son regarding their personal and professional lives and successes.

A good read for those who enjoy biographies.

A Land More Kind Than Home

By Wiley Cash

Jess Hall is a curious young boy growing up in a small North Carolina town. He is protective of his older brother Christopher, a mute affectionately nicknamed Stump. He is in awe of his father who is capable of any task needed at his family’s tobacco farm. And he is very curious about what happens inside the church his mother attends. He is equally curious about what he sees and hears taking place in his parent’s bedroom on a summer afternoon while his father is away.

What he witnesses launches Jess and his brother into a haunting tale of secrecy, brutal death and ultimately courage. The story is told by three narrators –Jess; Miss Lyle, church member and town midwife; and Clem Barefield, the county sheriff whose painful past is forever linked to the Hall family. In this debut novel, Cash masterfully employs these three characters as individual threads who, chapter by chapter, weave this intriguing story into a rich fabric of literary beauty.

Wild: from lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

     A powerful, blazing honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe-and built her back up again.

     At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything.  In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed.  Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life; to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State, and to do it alone.  She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise."  But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

     Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail.  Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor.  Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

921 Strayed, Non-fiction, Suspense