The author relives his life odyssey with his wife, Ele, from their first meeting at International House at the University of California, Berkeley, through a dozen appointments in the United States Foreign Service and the Organization of American States.

This remarkable book is written to help people move out of being run by their wounded emotional child to being run by their empowered authentic adult self. It chronicles shifting from living life fearfully to living life powerfully and lovingly. It will change your life.

At age twenty, Saloma Miller left behind her Amish community in Burton, Ohio, and boarded a night train for Vermont, where she knew no one. In this poignant coming-of-age memoir, Saloma’s new life of freedom includes work as a waitress and plans to continue her education. Romance also blossoms with a Yankee toymaker. Soon, however, a vanload of people from her community, including the Amish bishop, arrive to take her back into the fold. Saloma’s freedom comes to an abrupt end when she goes back home to Ohio with them. Thus begins a years-long struggle of feeling torn between two worlds: will she remain Amish and embrace the sense of belonging and community her Amish life offers, or will she return to the newfound freedom she tasted in Vermont? Saloma settles into teaching in an Amish school and does her best to fit back into Amish ways, but a legacy of childhood abuse, struggles with an eating disorder, and questions of identity plague her. Her ties to the outside world remain, mostly through the quiet perseverance of the toymaker from Vermont. He keeps sending her cards, never giving up hope that their love could survive the strain of living in two different worlds. Bonnet Strings by Saloma Miller Furlong offers a universal story of overcoming adversity and a rare look inside an Amish community. Readers of Amish fiction and viewers of the PBS documentaries such as The Amish and The Amish: Shunned will find in it a true story: of woundedness and healing, of doubt and faith, and of the often competing desires for freedom and belonging.

There are two ways to leave the Amish—one is through life and the other through death. When Saloma Miller Furlong’s father dies during her first semester at Smith College, she returns to the Amish community she had left twenty four years earlier to attend his funeral. Her journey home prompts a flood of memories. Now a mother with grown children of her own, Furlong recalls her painful childhood in a family defined by her father’s mental illness, her brother’s brutality, her mother’s frustration, and the austere traditions of the Amish—traditions Furlong struggled to accept for years before making the difficult decision to leave the community. In this personal and moving memoir, Furlong traces the genesis of her desire for freedom and education and chronicles her conflicted quest for independence. Eloquently told, Why I Left the Amish is a revealing portrait of life within—and without—this frequently misunderstood community.

How did the crystal-meth-addicted, alcohol-abusing porn star cross the road to become a beloved, world-famous yoga teacher? In his inspiring memoir, Two Lifestyles, One Lifetime, Les Leventhal reveals his desperate and wildly self-destructive attempts to grasp at self-worth in a turbulent, hostile environment. In the throes of a sharp downward spiral toward certain death, Les summons the strength and surrender to transform his life. However, he soon falls prey to the eerie parallels between his tumultuous past and the life many of us hold as an objective. With more at stake than ever before, Les finds the courage to make a daring choice that penetrates through superficial layers to profoundly change his life.

Two Lives One Lifetime tells a story about generational addiction, written in a way to pique the interest of all generations. Two Lives One Lifetime chronicles the life of each individual family member and how addiction is the thread that weaves through their lives and intertwines each one. You will be drawn into how upbringing, successes, and failures shaped their lives, all written through the authors perspective as she lived it. When the cycle of addictive devastation is finally broken, emerge with Pat into a new life of struggles, decisions, and gifts that change a life through a spirituality which passes all understanding.

Following clues in years of unsent love letters after her mother's death, Izzy steps into a world of English royalty in search of her father and falls in love with a young aristocrat-only to discover he may be her brother. A tale of two generations of love revealed in prose, texts, and love letters.