Novelist Miriam Toews possesses a unique insight into the survivors’ lives. Sign up for More to the Story, TIME’s weekly entertainment newsletter, to get the context you need for the pop culture you love The novel
It was a distressing dispatch from an enclave beyond most outsiders’ understanding, where the language used is Low German, a vestige of the 16th Century. It would have been awful no matter where it occurred, but the fact that it happened in this place-where residents have cut themselves off from modern society all while ostensibly ascribing to pacifism, made the case even stranger.
