A Murder in Amish Ohio: The Martyrdom of Paul Coblentz (True Crime)

This is the story of the murder of an Amish man in Holmes County, Ohio in 1957. I have been a resident of this County all of my life and was only a mere 5 years old at that time. I vividly remember the adults in our family discussing the Coblentz murder often. I gave my mom a copy of the book and she, along with numerous friends who are also life-long residents here, have read it. We all greatly appreciate the accuracy of the event and the description of the ways of the Amish life. The book is not written in a sensationalized manner, but rather in a historical format. We greatly appreciate how the authors wrote this book.

Not really sure how to describe this book. The author took the event of an Amish man being killed during an apparent robbery, and wrapped a whole book around it, not very successfully in my opinion. On almost every page, he makes great assumptions about how the family felt about it, and how they lived afterwards with sentences starting with "it can be assumed..." or "it is possible...". But, if learning about every single death of an Amish person in this country by means other than natural causes is interesting to you, this is the book for you. I thought it was weird.

The author presents a well written story of a crime in the Amish community and the Amish culture. I found it unfortunate that Gene and Mike escaped the ultimate punishment for their crimes. This not only ended the life of Paul but in reality damaged the lives of Dora and Esther along with Paul's parents. This was a senseless crime committed against good people.The story flowed well and was detailed but did not get bogged down with too much unnecessary information, especially when writing about the case in court.