Clouds without Rain. P. L. Gaus
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Praise for P. L. Gaus’s
AMISH COUNTRY MYSTERIES
“In this compact and tautly written mystery, the third in the series, Gaus portrays vividly the clash of traditional Amish values with the forces of land development and greed. . . . Gaus has structured his novel Dragnet style, relating events day-to-day, moment-to-moment, while the plot unfolds with deceptive simplicity from the initial gruesome accident.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Gaus is a sensitive storyteller who matches his cadences to the measured pace of Amish life, catching the tensions among the village’s religious factions.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Gaus . . . combines drama and bewilderment in just the right proportions.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Set among the Ohio Amish, this murder/mystery is more worldly than one would expect with such a backdrop. . . . How [Branden] unravels more than one mystery makes for interesting reading, particularly as he has to tread delicately between two parallel cultures.”
—The Jerusalem Post
“So many modern mystery novels feature crime fighters who seem every bit as sick in the head as the criminals they seek to put behind bars. Author P. L. Gaus’s mystery series set in Ohio’s Amish country features a college professor, not a tough private eye or a rogue cop, and a cast of Corn Belt criminals who are just as deadly as the big city variety.”
—The Advocate
“Clouds Without Rain uses believable characters to tell a carefully detailed story in an unhurried fashion. Gaus’ style is deliberate but never slow-moving and aptly fits the subject.”
—Medina Gazette
CLOUDS WITHOUT RAIN
AMISH COUNTRY MYSTERIES
by P. L. Gaus
Blood of the Prodigal
Broken English
Clouds without Rain
Cast a Blue Shadow
A Prayer for the Night
Separate from the World
Harmless as Doves
CLOUDS WITHOUT RAIN
AMISH COUNTRY MYSTERIES
P. L. Gaus
Ohio University Press
Athens
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2001 by P. L. Gaus
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved
New revised paperback edition 2020
Paperback ISBN 978-0-8214-1081-3
Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gaus, Paul L.
Clouds without rain : an Ohio Amish mystery / P.L. Gaus.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8214-1379-1 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8214-1380-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Amish Country (Ohio)—Fiction. 2. Amish—Fiction. 3. Ohio—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.A9517 C58 2001
813'.54—dc21
00-054536
because of my wife, Madonna, and dedicated to our daughters, Laura and Amy
Jude 12
These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead.
Thursday, July 6, 2000
Associated Press
For the first time in at least 20 years, the average price of farmland in Ohio exceeds that of all the other Corn Belt states. The steady development of houses and shopping centers in rural Ohio eventually pushed the state into the top spot, an agricultural expert said yesterday. “In the past, farmland was owned by farmers for agricultural purposes,” said Allan Lines, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University. “What we’re seeing now is we have all these other interests there in owning a piece of the real estate.”
Contents
A Journey to the Heights at Walnut Creek
Discussion Questions for Reading Groups
Preface and Acknowledgments
Not all of the places are real, but all are as authentic to Holmes County, Ohio, as I know how to make them. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, and any reference to legal and trust practices is my own fabrication, as are the events in this story. I have moved and altered the description of the psychiatric ward at Aultman Hospital. The ritual barn was located in Panther Hollow, not Walnut Creek Township. It has been destroyed. The weather in this story is more reminiscent of the summers of 1988 and 1989 than of 2000.
Thanks go to the excellent staff at the burn unit in the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Akron, Ohio, especially Julianne Klein, RN, BSN, and Mary Mondozzi, RN, MSN, as well as to Mark A. Harper of the Akron Fire Department, Ed Gasbarre of R. W. Gasbarre and Associates, Inc., surveyors, and Dr. Wayne M. Weaver of the Joel Pomerene Memorial Hospital in Millersburg.
Many thanks to Amish and former-Amish friends who do not wish to be named, and also to Chief Steve Thornton, Tom Kimmins, Esq., Ray and Kaye Fonte, Pastor Dean Troyer, and Eli Troyer—good friends, able advisors.
Most important, I wish to acknowledge the support, creative input, and careful editing of David Sanders and Nancy Basmajian, as well as the efforts of the other fine professionals at Ohio University Press.
Map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP
A Journey to the Heights at Walnut Creek
This journey will start in Wilmot, Ohio, at the intersection of US 250 and 62, in the southwestern corner of Stark County. If we follow US 62 west from there into Holmes County, for a short 0.2 miles, there is