Crimson Stain Essay

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Book Summary Jim Fisher’s Crimson Stain is “the shocking true story of the only Amish man ever convicted of homicide” (2000). This book is a non-fiction recount of the life, crime and subsequent sentence and imprisonment of a mentally unstable Amish man of the man who committed the gruesome murder of his wife on March 18, 1993: Edward D. Gingerich. At age 18, Ed Gingerich moved from Ontario to the 150-acre farm in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1983 with his family to an area that would be come to known as Brownhill settlement. An average student during formal Amish education, he was moody, had a short temper and was thinned-skinned (Fisher, 2000, p. 3). He was unpopular and a loner and was not even liked by his teachers. According to Fisher, he hated farm labor and used every trick in the book to avoid his share of the chores (p. 4). He was known to be a slacker and had a tendency to lie. From early youth through adolescence, it was clear to everyone that Ed lacked any interest in religion and “living the good Amish life” (Fisher, 2000, p. 4). By 1985, Ed’s father built a sawmill and Bishop Shetler, the spiritual and social leader of this Amish community, gave Mr. Gingerich permission to supply building material to the community. Ed was particularly interested in the mechanical end of the operation. He was highly intelligent in mechanics and machinery- most of which was self-taught. When he was not at the sawmill, he could be found spending time with Brownhill’s “English” (Fisher, 2000, p. ix) neighbors (those who were outside the Amish faith) fixing trucks, tractors and farm machinery. Over the next few months, Ed continued spending more time with his English friends and confessed something that had been troubling him for some time: he’d been thinking about leaving the Amish faith, but he didn’t know how to go about it (Fisher, 2000, p.9).

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