The Amish Wife

The Amish Wife was published on January 1, 2024 and I bought a copy for the Calendar of Crime Challenge. It is not fiction as I had originally thought but rather is a true crime story. In this book author Gregg Olsen solves a crime that took place among the Amish in 1977. After 2 or 3 pages I recognized the plot. A movie had been made about this crime in 2019, The Amish Serial Killer. After reading 100 pages I decided to watch the movie again because it was fantastic. Lo and behold our author Gregg Olsen is one of the narrators of the show. In the book at hand, Olsen reveals the conspiracy that kept this crime a secret for forty-five years.

The publisher's summary:

Pregnant wife and mother Ida Stutzman perished during a barn fire in an Ohio Amish community. The coroner’s report stated that she died of natural causes. Ida’s husband, Eli, was never considered a suspect. When Eli eventually rejected the faith and took his son Danny with him, murder followed. The dubious circumstances of the tragic blaze were willfully ignored and Eli’s shifting narratives were disregarded. Could Eli’s subsequent cross-country journey of death, including that of his own son, have been prevented if just one person came forward with what they knew about the real Eli Stutzman? These questions haunted Gregg Olsen and Ida’s brother Daniel Gingerich for decades. At Daniel’s urging, Olsen now returns to Amish Country and to Eli’s crimes first exposed in Olsen’s Abandoned Prayers, one of which has remained a mystery until now. With the help of aging witnesses and shocking long-buried letters, Olsen finally uncovers the disturbing truth about Ida’s murder.

I enjoyed the first half of the book but became bored in later chapters. The reason for the conspiracy of silence was already given by this point in the story,  although the author gave more details about it throughout the book. The movie I watched addressed this reason so it was not news for me. I did not read Olsen’s first book about the murder so I cannot say whether or not he has given updated information in this book. 

The title is misleading in that we don't read about Ida. It's about her husband, his friends and local law enforcement. We see all three covering up what they know about Ida’s death. It would be nice to have more information about her. Even the movie wasn't completely about her. It was about the death of her son Danny, the so-called little boy blue in the press. As a true crime story the death of Ida and Danny is a compelling one. I am not sure The Amish Wife is the best retelling of their story.

3 out of 5 stars.