Avoidance

Jeremy struggles to write his dissertation on the Amish and the laws of expulsion. How does someone, excluded entirely from the only community they have ever known, live the rest of their life? After extensive interviews with Beulah—a young woman banished—Jeremy is no closer to understanding her choice than he is to his own peculiar exile.

Camp Ironwood, set in the Vermont woods, is more than a summer distraction for restless adolescent boys—it is a place to belong. And not unlike the Amish community, it is a place where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For Jeremy, first as a camper and later as the co-director, the usual camp activities become their own kind of ritual that binds the community. 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 his desires, and worse yet, uncover the dark secrets of his beloved Camp Ironwood.

In the powerful and daring novel Avoidance, Lowenthal elegantly draws unexpected parallels between the Amish and Camp Ironwood. By doing so, he ingeniously explores an age-old dilemma: individual desires versus the good of a community.

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Avoidance

Jeremy struggles to write his dissertation on the Amish and the laws of expulsion. How does someone, excluded entirely from the only community they have ever known, live the rest of their life? After extensive interviews with Beulah—a young woman banished—Jeremy is no closer to understanding her choice than he is to his own peculiar exile.

Camp Ironwood, set in the Vermont woods, is more than a summer distraction for restless adolescent boys—it is a place to belong. And not unlike the Amish community, it is a place where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For Jeremy, first as a camper and later as the co-director, the usual camp activities become their own kind of ritual that binds the community. 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 his desires, and worse yet, uncover the dark secrets of his beloved Camp Ironwood.

In the powerful and daring novel Avoidance, Lowenthal elegantly draws unexpected parallels between the Amish and Camp Ironwood. By doing so, he ingeniously explores an age-old dilemma: individual desires versus the good of a community.

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Avoidance

Avoidance

by Michael Lowenthal
Avoidance

Avoidance

by Michael Lowenthal

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Overview

Jeremy struggles to write his dissertation on the Amish and the laws of expulsion. How does someone, excluded entirely from the only community they have ever known, live the rest of their life? After extensive interviews with Beulah—a young woman banished—Jeremy is no closer to understanding her choice than he is to his own peculiar exile.

Camp Ironwood, set in the Vermont woods, is more than a summer distraction for restless adolescent boys—it is a place to belong. And not unlike the Amish community, it is a place where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For Jeremy, first as a camper and later as the co-director, the usual camp activities become their own kind of ritual that binds the community. 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 his desires, and worse yet, uncover the dark secrets of his beloved Camp Ironwood.

In the powerful and daring novel Avoidance, Lowenthal elegantly draws unexpected parallels between the Amish and Camp Ironwood. By doing so, he ingeniously explores an age-old dilemma: individual desires versus the good of a community.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781555973674
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Publication date: 11/28/2002
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 327,255
Product dimensions: 6.06(w) x 8.64(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Michael Lowenthal is the author of a previous novel, The Same Embrace, and is editor of many nonfiction collections. He currently teaches writing at Boston College.

Read an Excerpt

Avoidance


By Michael Lowenthal

Graywolf Press

Copyright © 2002 Michael Lowenthal
All right reserved.

ISBN: 1-55597-367-1


Chapter One

Try to imagine not even knowing how to fall, because a hand was always, always there to catch you. Two sisters, five brothers, a hundred cousins. At her one-room Amish school, built on Uncle Christian's farm, a third of the pupils shared her surname. Her plain, aproned dresses and organdy prayer caps were her sisters' hand-me-downs, sewn by their mother. The clothes of every girl she knew were stitched identically, right down to the width of their Kapp seams.

But that was Beulah Glick's life before. What I wanted to know was why she'd left. How?

We were sharing a booth at the Plain & Fancy Diner, in blink-and-miss-it Gap, Pennsylvania. My first field interview, four years ago. Twenty-five and enthused about my new research topic, I'd read Hostetler, Kraybill, Huntington; I'd browsed the Pequea Bruderschaft Library. I'd never spoken to someone "in the ban."

Despite Indian-summer heat I was dressed in blue chinos and a buttoned poly shirt that showed my sweat - not too city-slick, not too academic. Beulah sat rigid, arms locked to her sides, as though the booth were a plunging roller coaster. She wore a gray blouse and a brown knee-length skirt, misfitting store-bought clothes. Her hair was still yanked back, Amish-style, from a center part. The bald streak from years of tightening looked painful.

I ordered the farmer's special: three pancakes, three eggs, a side of scrapple. (In Lancaster County, appetite triumphs diplomas.) Beulah asked for coffee - no sugar, no cream - and, as an afterthought, two eggs. Waiting for the food, she barely spoke. Shyness around an unfamiliar man? Maybe shame? Or the meek temper of Gelassenheit. It's the personal submission the Amish strive for - the self-denial for community's sake - and a lack of it was Beulah's supposed crime. To me, she could hardly have seemed more yielding. When her eggs came, she only poked them with her fork.

I can't bring myself to touch my food, either. Why'd I bother smuggling it into the library? The air in here, freeze-dried, feels worse than outside's scorch. Saturday evening. Most of Harvard's fled.

Congealing in Styrofoam, shrimp pad thai fouls my carrel; Thai iced tea glares the shade of fake tans. And what I'm craving, believe it or not, is a hot dog. A humble hot dog, third-degreed on a stick. Let it fall from the stick, even; spice it strong with ash and mulch. I'd eat it anyway. That's the spirit - summer camp!

Who'd have thought I'd wax nostalgic for wieners? Or s'mores? Or bug juice, toxic with red dye? First-night fare I used to rail against in staff meetings. ("Why pander to kids' preconceptions of camp? Ironwood's different. We should show them from the start.") But Charlie Moss was director; he called the shots. Comfort food is always best on first night, he insisted. We had all summer for Camp Ironwood values.

Not this summer. Not for us. Not for Max.

Max's cast - well, half of it - sits up on the shelf, propped against the tools of my trade (The Riddle of Amish Culture; Habits of the Heart). And where is Max himself, his wrist now healed, strong again? I haven't heard anything since camp ended.

(Continues...)



Excerpted from Avoidance by Michael Lowenthal Copyright © 2002 by Michael Lowenthal . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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