Readers Say

He Flew Too High

“In his remarkable book, Ken Reed engages us in a search for integrity and meaning in one’s faith claims. His novel lays bare the tensions that build when people confuse application with dogma. . . . Our faith is not based on human leaders or even systems of thought but on Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Lord of the Church.”
--Dr. Myron S. Augsburger, Church Planter, Author of Pilgrim Aflame, on which the 1990 CINE Golden Eagle Award winning film, The Radicals, was based.

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Mennonite Soldier

(New quality paperback release by Masthof Press of this classic retelling of the Prodigal Son Story set in World War I America. Includes a thoughtful Foreword essay on Mennonites and the military by Prof. Joel Hartman of the University of Missouri. )

Mastie and Ira Stoltzfus, Mennonite brothers, face the draft in World War I.

Ira chooses the traditional Mennonite position of conscientious objection to war. He refuses to cooperate with military officials at Ethan Allen Camp in Georgia, suffers repeated indignities, and is sentenced to twenty-five years in Ft. Leavenworth for refusing an officer’s order to plant marigolds.

Excommunicated from church, Mastie joins the Army against the wishes of his parents and his intimate Mennonite girlfriend, Annie. Following basic training, he is shipped to the front lines in France and mans a machine gun in battles with the Kaiser’s troops.

Wounded, Mastie finds himself in a make-shift hospital in a battered cathedral under the care of a Catholic sister. Through months of separation, Mastie continues to receive letters from Annie. She begs him to return to her and the Mennonite community, but Mastie feels his father has consigned him to hell for defying Mennonite belief.

As the story shifts back and forth between Ira and Mastie, you will be caught up in a powerful examination of love and war, duty and conscience, and the starkly different experiences of two boys from the same Mennonite home.