Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is best known for its abundantly productive farmland and for the Amish and other “Plain People” who have made their home there since colonial times. Now both of these unique features are in danger of being permanently destroyed. “The Garden Spot of America” loses more than 20 acres of farmland every day to accelerated development. And the Amish, with a population that has doubled in the past 20 years and little land left to farm, tired of living in a fish-bowl for five million tourists a year, and frustrated by changing regulations, are moving out. They are going to Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana -- anywhere to get away from “Amish Country.” Randy Testa initially traveled to Lancaster County in the summer of 1988 to research his dissertation, never intending to become involved personally in county affairs. But living with an Amish family that summer he saw firsthand the trials they faced: constant streams of gawking tourists, the daily paving-over of rich farmland, and the greed and complicity of local officials. Realizing that the quiet, nonresistant Amish would not fight against these destructive influences, Testa felt called to speak out on their behalf. Thus began the continuing moral journey that is at the heart of After the Fire. It is a story of family and farming, community and faith, morality as practiced by the Amish in daily life. And, ultimately, it is about our own world, for as Testa writes, we must look to the Amish to “point out how far we have strayed.” The book is illustrated with 20 charcoal drawings by Amish artist Susie Riehl. The drawings are as understated as the Amish themselves, simple yet striking sketches from within a threatened world. In this final decade of the twentieth century, a life-and-death struggle is being played out in Lancaster County: between land speculation and land stewardship, between material wealth and moral worth, between unrestrained growth and “the ties that bind.” The Amish are at the center of the conflict, trying to maintain their unique community in the face of increasing encroachment from the outside. Randy Testa stands as a witness to their struggle, telling “the story of a people on the verge of conflagration.”

A Festering Sweetness is a new approach for the renowned child psychiatrist and writer Robert Coles. His works have always portrayed children in their own social fabric and language, but in this book he has arranged the words and intent of the children and their parents into verse forms.  These skillfully constructed poems capture the hopes, fears, assumptions, and expectations of these people.

The sense of life and suffering among the poor of the South, the northern ghettos, and the West conveyed in A Festering Sweetness could not  be expressed in any form other than poetry.  And only Robery Coles, who has lived and worked among these people, could have revealed with such sympathy and insight the minds and emotions of the deprived in America.  He is a superb stylist, with an extraordinary sensitivity of ear and eye, as well as a fine and humane psychiatrist—indeed, a man in the doctor-writer tradition of William Carlos Williams.

Uprooted Children is a study of migrant farm children in Florida and the eastern seaboard. It describes how black, white, and Mexican-American children of migrant families grow up in rural America under conditions of extreme hardship and how they come to terms with the world and themselves. In preparation for this book, Dr. Coles spent years among migrants, drawing his research through interviews and every day life.