How does someone, excluded from the only community he or she has ever known, go on living? Haunted by this question, Harvard student Jeremy Stull lives with a devout Amish family to observe their faith and their strict shunning of those who breach it. He befriends Beulah -- a banished Amish woman -- but comes no closer to understanding her predicament than he is to fathoming his own bitter exile.
For Jeremy, community means Ironwood, a summer camp in the Vermont woods that is more than a mere diversion for restless boys -- it is a place to belong. First as a camper, then as assistant director, Jeremy has found in Ironwood's rituals a sturdy foundation for his life; like the tight-knit Amish society he's been studying, it's a whole greater than the sum of its parts. But when he is blindsided by the seductive charm of Max, a fourteen-year-old boy from Manhattan, all arms and legs and attitude, Jeremy must confront both his own confusing desires and a legacy of disturbing secrets at his beloved Ironwood.
In this powerful and daring novel, Michael Lowenthal ingeniously explores an age-old dilemma: individual desire versus the good of the group. In the words of Chris Bohjalian, "Michael Lowenthal is simply a wonderful storyteller. He understands both the heart's need for community and the soul's need for seclusion -- and the way evil can exist in either place."
