All this makes me wonder how long these communities can continue. Some stay at a Comfort Inn where there is electricity and running water. Relatives go to Ontario (Canada) for this funeral from Ohio, Iowa, Indiana and other places… presumably not by buggies. While his father uses a typewriter, there is mention of using a family web site for the details of his father’s funeral. There are many others he meets in passing who either left the Amish or work in the world of the English. Ira has a brother who also left the Amish.

The book provokes thought for some of the things said in passing. His father shunned him for leaving, a little less than as the years went on. His father published a periodical that promotes Amish family life that is widely read throughout the Amish world. It took a while for his father to permit Ira to park his car near the house.

When he visits his parents, he stays in a house with no heat, lanterns and his mother makes simple food. Even more outside his past, he experiences divorce. He goes to law school and tells how this is at odds with is upbringing. He chose to go to Bob Jones University and it is interesting to read how someone from and Amish background experienced this fundamentalist university. He tells how he found his way to a GED and a community college where he excelled. The title of this book speaks to his relationship with his father, who had difficulty accepting his decision to leave, but this is only one part of the story. In a previous book, he wrote about how he came to leave and the leaving. Ira Wagler writes of his life after having left the Amish community. Wagler poignantly describes the aging and death of his mother and father as well as a reflection on the roads (choices) he has taken. Thomas Wolfe is Wagler's favorite author and he references him throughout the book, particularly with the phrase 'You can't go home again.' He describes his relentless pursuit of knowledge, freedom and hope. He was also the first person in his family to get divorced. Wagler was the first person in his family to get his college degree and to get an advanced degree. His father softened as he aged and each time Wagler visited, he and his father would talk late into the night. In this book, Wagler's ninety-seven year old father is dying. Yet it is a universally powerful thing for a child to yearn for his father's acceptance and blessing. Wagler mentions that the Amish have hard, ruthless laws about shunning those who leave the Amish. He was the ninth child in a family of eleven children. Wagler grew up Amish and left the Amish at age 26.

Wagler's first book, Growing Up Amish, was published in 2011 and Broken Roads was published in 2020. Ira Wagler's memoir, Broken Roads: Returning to My Amish Father, is an incredible memoir that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Growing up amish by ira wagler