Overview: Amity: Stories from the Heartland is a whimsy, mystery, spirituality and the holy ordinariness of daily life mingle together in this delightful collection of short stories.

Verdict: Amity: Stories from the Heartland is a collection of short stories by well-known Quaker writer Brent Bill. Each story is set in the Midwest of the United States, a region known for its honest, hardworking, plain-speaking, religious people who are as complex and thoughtful as the most urbane city dwellers.

These stories are about 1930s housewives, modern day priests, 1960s kids, and more -- as well as the varieties and vagaries of their lives’ trials, triumphs, failings, joys, sorrows, and surviving -- and the beauty and mystery of it all.

In what is a rather heartfelt, albeit at all times soberingly realistic look at what could have been almost any Midwest town, aside from a vein of pure innocence that flows throughout the prose, there is notably also a genuine sense of humor that resonates from the very first few pages through to the books conclusion.

This collection of characters that sooner, rather than later, we start to adhere to, crafting our own images of how we perceive them to look, brings forth a quite remarkable act of storytelling quite like I myself haven’t encountered for many a year.

Thus these varying stories of everyday life in small town America come across as not only a just-written collection of paragraphs to try and ignite some form of reflective common ground for what is being told, but moreover the gentle, touchingly comedic tales of uproarious redemption allow us to view a warmly goodhearted landscape that is as welcome now as it was back then.

About the Author - John Brent Bill is Quaker minister, author, retreat leader, conservationist, and photographer. He has written many books, articles, and fiction pieces and teaches writing at the graduate school level and in adult continuing education courses. He has also served as a writing coach to a number of published writers. He lives in Mooresville, Indiana.

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