Mill Creek: A Novel

Mill Creek tells the story of the age-old struggle of an adolescent's attempts
to understand himself and his world. Peter Martin, the brainy, shy, farm-boy
narrator, pious beyond his years, fi ghts a private war: whether to remain with
his strict farm people or whether to embrace his best friend's anarchic approach
to Mennonite life. Arthur Nyce, with his fl ashy clothes, his repertoire of pop
tunes, his dereliction of a school's prescribed piety and his open affection
throws Peter off balance again and again.

Mill Creek records Peter's fl uctuations between accepting and denying the
diverse aspects of these two approaches to Mennonite life. An almost amorous
friendship, the threat of the draft (Korean War), the lure of art, a pregnancy
and a tragic drowning aid Peter to make compromising moves to pay tribute
to his friend Arthur. In the end, Peter resolves to fi nd a way out of what he
has come to understand as the religious oppression of his own community.

Set on the campus of a boarding school, this wry, affectionate depiction of two
boys' struggles towards adulthood illuminates the golden era of conservative
Lancaster (PA) Mennonites in the early 1950s. The youth in Mill Creek
are pious, sentimental and romantic. They blend a serious intent to imitate
their stolid elders and to mock lightly without fully discarding their heritage.
Tender and passionate, innocent and sentimental, rigid and heartbreaking,
the novel is a requiem for joy.