111 pages including color frontispiece illustrations (some color) 24 x 20 cm
Summary
"The author, in selecting the background for her story, turns to the famous Ephrata Cloister in the Pennsylvania Dutch country of southeastern Pennsylvania. This cloister contains serious-minded, religious men and women who feed the soldiers and bind their wounds. They like young Stephen so much that they are especially nice to him. In return, and at considerable risk of which he thinks nothing, he eagerly volunteers to thwart a plot against the life of General Washington who is planning to visit the wounded soldiers." [dust jacket]
" The account of Beissel's life in Pennsylvania provides an interesting narrative, in which events, difficulties, scandals, and near-scandals in the Cloisters, are skillfully interwoven with an interpretation of the thought and practice which lay behind them. The Ephrata experiment is seen as one of the first attempts in a long line of idealistic communities in America, and the problems of the community as well as of the leader receive due consideration." [from the foreward]
