Book: Plain & Simple, A Woman's Journey to the Amish

This book, Plain and Simple by Sue Bender, has two elements that make it one of my favourites. First: it advocates Simplicity as an enriching lifestyle of choice. Second: it has quilts. 'nough said!

It's a auto-biographical journey of a woman, living and working in California who is suddenly called toward the Amish through their simple patchwork quilts. At first she wants to touch and feel the art, then she wants to learn how to make them before finally she decides she must learn who the artists are behind them.

My life was like a crazy quilt, a pattern I hated. Hundreds of scattered, unrelated, stimulating fragments, each going off in its own direction, creating a lot of frantic energy. There was no overall structure to hold the pieces together. The crazy quilt was a perfect metaphor for my life.

-Sue Bender

This is not a new book. It was released in 1989. It is still very relative. Of course the 80s were a harried time for feminism which out and out scorned homemaking and servitude of any form. Now there seems to be a renaissance of homemaking, and keepers of the home. Sue Bender seemed to be a product of her generation. Pushy and driven to work yet drawn to the home and not understanding why.

I found this book wonderfully written, hugely entertaining and very easy to get lost in. It's a short book, a very quick and simple read. Just what I was looking for.