In the valley of the shadow
Subtitle: an elegy to Lancaster County
By: Randy-Michael Testa ; photographs by Ed Worteck.
Publisher: University Press of New England
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Hanover
Language: eng
Number of pages: 79
Subjects: Mennonites -- Pennsylvania -- Mill Creek Valley (Lancaster County) -- Social conditions.; Amish -- Pennsylvania -- Mill Creek Valley (Lancaster County) -- Social conditions.; Mennonites -- Pennsylvania -- Mill Creek Valley (Lancaster County) -- Pictorial works.; Amish -- Pennsylvania -- Mill Creek Valley (Lancaster County) -- Pictorial works.; Real estate development -- Pennsylvania -- Earl (Lancaster County : Township); Mill Creek Valley (Lancaster County, Pa.) -- Social conditions.; Mill Creek Valley (Lancaster County, Pa.) -- Pictorial works.; Earl (Lancaster County, Pa. : Township) -- Politics and government.
Description: This compassionate examination of the dilemmas facing the Amish and Mennonite communities in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania focuses on the controversy surrounding construction of a 600-unit retirement complex on prime farmland. Through interviews, personal accounts, and newspaper reports of the controversy, Randy-Michael Testa traces the cultural and economic erosion that is threatening a unique minority, and Ed Worteck's evocative photos capture a physical destruction indicative of greater moral decay.

The interplay of politics, deception, bigotry, and beleaguered faith succumbing to the age of technology vividly portrays "a place struggling to keep its spiritual dignity, a place where modernity thunders over tradition, as time races ahead."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [75]-79).