Tobias of the Amish We are linked to our parents in ways we hardly recognize. For the child who grows up under a fractured roof there will always be something unfathomable about the parent who dies too young. It is important to fill in the gaps towards understanding, take the measure of that faded figure in the background.  Ervin R. Stutzman, Moderator of Mennonite Church USA, is that child. In a decade-long research and writing project, he went on an exceptional journey to find his father, Tobias Stutzman, who at age 37 was killed in a car accident. Ervin was only a toddler and has no memories of his father. In the years after Tobe's death, Ervin's mother Emma spoke little of him, nor did others in the Amish community of which he had been a part. It was as if a veil of silence had been drawn, secrets tucked away. Years later Ervin determined to dive into the wreck and retrieve the cargo of the past. Tobias Stutzman came to maturity in an agriculture community but knew early on that he did not get his juice from farming. He dreamed of his own woodworking business. In his first job he had permission to use his employer's shop for his own woodworking projects. He had what one might call an avarice for doing, seeing in every possibility an opportunity that might not come his way again. He made things out of wood, and later, metal: tables, cabinets, custom-built buggies, wooden wagon boxes, address lamps, chicken catchers, feed scoops, tomato racks, self-watering flower pots and glove display racks. He even marketed sewing machines. "If it is made of wood, we can do it!" said a sign outside his shop during the earlier years. A recurrent theme is borrowed money.  The Stutzmans got into debt even as a newly married couple. Tobe performed on a grand scale; he appears not to have foreseen or planned for major decisions. Things were entered but not balanced. Tobe was perhaps unpracticed in an awareness of his own needs. Because the contours of his heart were warm and generous, he was easily distracted by the claims of others. One is struck by his raw capability as he struggled to keep work and family afloat. Yet his story includes no turning from bad habits. Instead he carries on blindly, creating the same painful situation - a trail of debt - over and again. Had he seen his besetting sin with clarity, he might have asked his community to make him accountable much earlier than they later did, on their own terms. What went amiss with Tobe's strivings?  Sociologists remind us that behaviors in families are usually passed along and can become the emotional legacy of generations. Tobias' parents, John and Anna, kept their counsel about their financial woes and marital disappointments. John was rather given to abrupt announcements of upheaval ("We're moving!) without much explanation. He did not come to Tobe and Emma's wedding; it is not clear what the falling-out was about. Possibly Tobe carried this oblique and flawed communication - the constipated silence, the shutting down - into his own family life. Indeed, Tobe and Emma seemed bound by opposite needs in their subterranean drama of spenders versus savers  - his restlessness to wander and experiment, her need to find a settled place.   It is important to see our forebears in their lapses, in their all too human misdemeanors, for they are we. Their besetting sins are likely ours, too. Distinction and idiosyncrasy alike provide the flickering backdrop in all of our lives. We all carry invisible scars from childhood. None of us live up to our deepest principles. Yet when one writes about the past, it is tempting to present things in the best possible light against future scrutiny. There is many a lightly-sleeping dragon past which one must tiptoe, not least the beast called denial, for it would be much easier to idealize such a loss and leave some things well and alone. Ervin Stutzman does not assign to his past a grandeur it could never have possessed, nor does he hold an exaggerated subservience to it that would preclude a clear seeing.   Tobias of the Amish is a finely wrought portrait of Amish life in its observation of the Ordnung, those boundaries set by rule. The story invites questions about how one defines success. There is a certain poignancy in a wall motto Tobe once made: "If mistakes were money, I'd be rich." (Perhaps today he would be investing in stocks or conglomerates.)  Would Tobe have been accepted into the middle of his community, and not on its combative edges, had he put his energies into something perceived to be more "spiritual"? Perhaps the foibles of a well-meaning father set forth a compelling counter-schooling. Unlike his father, Ervin had educational opportunities that have drawn him into a many-sided academic world. In contrast to his father, he can live in a dozen cities of the mind, cities about which his father might only have dreamed.   Tobe exhibited a move-on spirit in a community that valued, rather, earning a living in an approved occupation in a settled place. He chafed under the patterns of authority and restraints on behavior, and he found ways around official channels. He installed electric lights in his shop without asking permission. He and his wife gave their children second names in a community that viewed an additional moniker as worldly. They eventually joined the Beachy church because Tobe wanted modern conveniences.  Clearly, his entrepreneurial bent and its attendant risk-taking fell outside the comfort zone of others, and eventually they turned away. Who knows, today Tobe might be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder: the powerlessness to focus amid many perceived competing urgencies. (One pictures his work area piled high with unfinished tasks.)    Ervin Stutzman's link to his father was renegotiated, even in death. On a clear day you can see a long way back.