Customer Reviews
This Journey is Worth the Trip - By: Ms. Railgirl, 26 Dec 2006 
This is one of those books I come back to again & again, & get something new out of it each time. Yes, Swander's writing style is somewhat haphazard, & she has a tendency to be a bit of a drama queen. But her thoughts lead me to form my own ideas about whatever is bothering me at the time (I tend to return to this book when I'm unsettled about something). I love this book & its meditative style. I recommend it for a rainy Sunday with a good cup of something warm.
Swander is a wonder - By: , 04 Oct 1998 
Feeling in need of healing myself, I read "Out of This World," with delight. It's an Iowan's book, or a Midwesterner's, & it helps to live near an Amish community. Swander can depict the Amish people as individuals, because she interacts with them & respects their simplicity & spirituality. I especiallly enjoyed the description of her Christmas celebration & of her animals' lives. To me, she writes like E. B. White crossed with Annie Dillard--the domestic life interwoven with the natural, seamlessly.
Rambling, self-absorbed & poorly written. - By: , 18 Jan 1998 
My copy of this book is titled "Out Of This World: A Woman's Life Among The Amish", NOT "Out Of This World: A Journey Of Healing". I was disappointed. I was expecting a cultural anthropology of an "English" woman's experiences living in a primarily Amish neighborhood. True, there was some of that in the book. But it was mostly a rambling, self-absorbed personal memoir. The author was writing about her trials in coming to terms with her Environmental Illness. By the end of the book, I was thoroughly bored with her hypnotherapy sessions, her dreams about eating, the many frog legs she actuallly ate (including details on their capture & slaughter) & exactly how she chewed her yucca. In addition to not being the type of book I was expecting, it appeared to be written in more or less a "stream of consciousness" style, with no logical organization or chronology. In other words, I didn't particularly enjoy the book & I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
