1896 is the most eventful year of Silas Hershey's life. The Mennonite teenager works on the family's Pennsylvania farm, plays with his nearest cousins, and worships at whichever home hosts the meeting that week. He unquestioningly obeys his parents and the church elders and assumes life (with the addition of a girlfriend) will continue as it has.

Later he recognizes the early signs of change. One brother has moved to Montana to work, another wants to quit farming altogether. Sister Barbie is resisting her approaching marriage, raising fears she'll abandon the simple Mennonite lifestyle as her older sister did.

These small conflicts have a wide-reaching effect. As Silas explains, "Joining church was different in those days, something you did when you were grown-up and sure you'd decided for certain, usually after you'd been married a year or so.... That way young people had a chance to get the wildness out of their systems."

Now, though, one segment of the community wants hellfire sermons followed by public "born again" conversions and a stricter separation from the world, such as the Amish practice. This segment seizes on Barbie's tragic death to push their conviction that the unbaptized are damned.

Stambaugh is the granddaughter of Silas Hershey, which has given her access to private records and eyewitness accounts of that significant year. A native of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, she uses the sights, smells, and sounds of her childhood to make the Hershey farm live in the reader's mind. So does young Silas and through him, the whole question of, "How do we know we're saved?" This book is a jewel. Kathleen T. Choi, HAWAII CATHOLIC HERALD