The Amish Wife by Gregg Olsen is a true crime narrative in which the author tries to uncover what happened to a young wife who dies in a barn fire in Ohio in 1977. The author has previously written about the man at the centre of this story, Eli Stutzman and murders which he committed, in a book called Abandoned Prayers which also talks about the death of their son which came after Eli left the area. I haven’t read the previous book and the author assumes that you have because he misses out what I think are some necessary explanations and background which he has presumably already written about. This meant that I felt that I didn’t have the full picture of everything that had happened.
Eli was a former member of an Amish community in Ohio and was also gay. Eli’s wife Ida died suspiciously when she perished during a barn fire. The coroner’s report said that her death was from natural causes and Ida’s husband, Eli, was never considered a suspect. Eventually, Eli rejected his faith and left the community taking his son Danny with him.
It is the author’s opinion, shared by many of Ida’s family, that Eli killed her and to explore this he looked for written evidence and interviewed people who were known to the family at the time. His investigation uncovered some alarming covering up activities by local law enforcement which seems to have been connected by a shared sexuality with Eli. The solution to this “mystery” isn’t any surprise or shock as it is very obvious, especially when you consider what happened after Eli left, that the husband was the culprit. What is interesting is the discovery of the cover up and the reasons behind the failure to bring Eli to justice for what was obviously a crime and how that enabled him to go on to kill again.
Because I didn’t have the background information this book wasn’t as interesting as it could have been and I did feel that a certain amount of repetition padded the narrative out until it was long enough to justify a book. I also would have liked more background on how the Amish lived, their relationships with law enforcement and their attitude to sexuality.
Anne Is Reading 